Language

Leaf’s interface is available in Simplified Chinese, French, Mexican Spanish, Japanese, Vietnamese and Russian alongside English. Each one was made or checked by a speaker from the community, not run through a machine and shipped as-is.

A translation that is still being filled in shows the lines nobody has reached yet in English. If you would like to finish one, or add a language of your own, see Translate Leaf.

Switching

Go to Settings > System > Language, choose one with Left and Right, and press A. Leaf asks you to confirm, then switches in place: you stay on the same page, and nothing restarts. Choose English the same way to switch back.

Languages are listed with English first and the rest in alphabetical order.

The row only appears when a translation is installed, so if you do not see it, your Leaf predates the feature.

What changes

Menus, settings, dialogs, button hints, the in-game menu, and system messages are translated. RetroArch and PPSSPP follow too: their own menus switch with Leaf, so you never set the language in three places, and switching back to English brings them all with it. For Chinese or Japanese the interface also switches to a font that can draw them, since none of the nine regular Leaf fonts carry those characters. That is why the Font row in Settings is locked while either is active: your chosen font comes back when you switch back.

Vietnamese works with every regular font except Fredoka, which is missing its letters. While Vietnamese is active, Leaf uses Nunito in its place and skips Fredoka in the Font row. If you had chosen Fredoka, it comes back when you switch language.

Russian works the same way with four fonts that have no Cyrillic letters: Space Grotesk, Lexend, Baloo 2 and Fredoka. While Russian is active, Leaf uses Nunito in place of any of them and skips them in the Font row. Your choice comes back when you switch language.

If you would rather run PSP games in a different language from the rest of Leaf, set it inside PPSSPP’s own settings. Leaf notices you have chosen for yourself and stops changing it.

What stays in English

Some things are kept in English on purpose:

• Game names. They come from your files and from the artwork scraper. Leaf never rewrites them.
• Console names. Game Boy, PlayStation, and the rest stay in Latin script, which is how Chinese players write them too. The arcade category is translated (街机).
• Product and app names. Leaf, RetroArch, and the built-in apps keep their names, since those are the words you would search for when asking for help.
• Some standalone emulator menus. PPSSPP now follows Leaf, but the others each carry their own interface and are still English. DraStic is only ever offered in Traditional Chinese, which is the one translation it ships, so Leaf leaves it in English rather than switch you to the wrong script. Flycast and the N64 emulator have no Chinese at all. Bringing the rest in line is on the list.

Chinese game names

This part works in any language, including English. A game file named in Chinese, a fan translation for example, used to show up as empty boxes. Now it renders correctly everywhere titles appear, and the rest of your interface stays exactly as it was.

Fixing a translation

If a string reads wrong, say so on the Discord. No update is needed to test a fix: Leaf reads a plain text override file from .umrk/mlp1/i18n/<code>.tsv on the SD card, for example zh_CN.tsv, one English<TAB>translation pair per line, which outranks the built-in translation. Restart Leaf after adding or changing it, since the table is read at start. That file is how the Chinese translation was reviewed in the first place, and it survives updates.

Filling in a language rather than correcting a line is a bigger job, and has its own page: Translate Leaf.