Supported Languages

champollion ships with Language Cards — structured configuration files for 50 languages. Each card contains register presets, formality system metadata, method support flags, typography rules, and script information. Any language your LLM knows can be added with a single config line — these are the ones with curated, production-ready registers.

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Translation Methods

Each language can use one or more of these translation methods:

Icon	Method	How It Works	Cost
🟢	Google Translate	Neural MT baseline. 130+ languages. Key-value strings only — cannot safely translate Markdown content.	~$20/1M chars
🔵	LLM (OpenRouter)	Any language the model knows. Register-steered prompts. Handles key-value + Markdown content.	Varies by model
🟣	LLM-Coached	LLM + grammar dictionaries + coaching data injected into prompts. Best for morphologically complex languages.	Varies by model
🟠	API (Plugin)	Community-hosted translation pipelines served over HTTP. OCAP-compatible.	Varies by provider

Set GOOGLE_TRANSLATE_API_KEY for Google Translate, or OPENROUTER_API_KEY for LLM methods. See Translation Methods for full details.

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Priority Languages

These are the most commonly requested locales for web and mobile applications, listed in champollion's recommended accessibility-first order.

Flag	Language	Code	Google	LLM	Coached	Script	Notes
🇸🇦	Arabic	ar	✅	✅	✅	—	RTL. Modern Standard Arabic (فصحى).
🇵🇭	Filipino (Taglish)	tl / fil	✅	✅	✅	—	Use fil in Docusaurus configs. champollion resolves both.
🇫🇷	French	fr	✅	✅	✅	—	Vous-form. Gender-inclusive (Connecté·e).
🇪🇸	Spanish	es	✅	✅	✅	—	Neutral Latin American.
🇩🇪	German	de	✅	✅	✅	—	Sie-form. Gender-inclusive (Benutzer:innen).
🇯🇵	Japanese	ja	✅	✅	✅	—	です/ます for body text, する for UI labels.
🇨🇳	Chinese (Simplified)	zh	✅	✅	✅	—	简体中文.
🇮🇹	Italian	it	✅	✅	✅	—	Lei-form.
🇧🇷	Portuguese (BR)	pt	✅	✅	✅	—	Brazilian Portuguese.
🇰🇷	Korean	ko	✅	✅	✅	—	해요체 polite register.

Major World Languages

Flag	Language	Code	Google	LLM	Coached	Script	Notes
🇧🇩	Bengali	bn	✅	✅	✅	—	শুদ্ধ ভাষা preference.
🇧🇬	Bulgarian	bg	✅	✅	✅	—
🇨🇿	Czech	cs	✅	✅	✅	—	Vykání (vy-form).
🇩🇰	Danish	da	✅	✅	✅	—
🇬🇷	Greek	el	✅	✅	✅	—	Modern Δημοτική.
🇮🇷	Persian	fa	✅	✅	✅	—	RTL.
🇫🇮	Finnish	fi	✅	✅	✅	—	No grammatical gender.
🇮🇱	Hebrew	he	✅	✅	✅	—	RTL.
🇮🇳	Hindi	hi	✅	✅	✅	—	शुद्ध हिन्दी. Minimal English loanwords.
🇭🇺	Hungarian	hu	✅	✅	✅	—	Ön-form.
🇮🇩	Indonesian	id	✅	✅	✅	—
🇲🇾	Malay	ms	✅	✅	✅	—
🇳🇱	Dutch	nl	✅	✅	✅	—	U-form.
🇳🇴	Norwegian	nb	✅	✅	✅	—	Bokmål.
🇵🇱	Polish	pl	✅	✅	✅	—	Pan/Pani form.
🇵🇹	Portuguese (EU)	pt-PT	✅	✅	✅	—	European Portuguese.
🇷🇴	Romanian	ro	✅	✅	✅	—
🇷🇺	Russian	ru	✅	✅	✅	—	Вы-form.
🇸🇰	Slovak	sk	✅	✅	✅	—	Vykanie (vy-form).
🇷🇸	Serbian	sr	✅	✅	✅	🔤 Latin→Cyrillic	Deterministic script converter.
🇸🇪	Swedish	sv	✅	✅	✅	—
🇰🇪	Swahili	sw	✅	✅	✅	—
🇹🇭	Thai	th	✅	✅	✅	—	ครับ/ค่ะ politeness particles.
🇹🇷	Turkish	tr	✅	✅	✅	—	Siz-form.
🇺🇦	Ukrainian	uk	✅	✅	✅	—	Ви-form.
🇵🇰	Urdu	ur	✅	✅	✅	—	RTL. آپ form.
🇻🇳	Vietnamese	vi	✅	✅	✅	—
🇹🇼	Chinese (Traditional)	zh-TW	✅	✅	✅	—	繁體中文.
🇬🇪	Georgian	ka	✅	✅	—	—	ქართული. Kartvelian family.
🇳🇬	Yoruba	yo	✅	✅	—	—	Èdè Yorùbá. Tonal (3 tones).

Regional Variants

Flag	Language	Code	Google	LLM	Coached	Script	Notes
🇲🇽	Mexican Spanish	es-MX	✅	✅	✅	—	Tú-form. Warm register.
🇨🇦	Canadian French	fr-CA	✅	✅	✅	—	Québécois idioms.

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Indigenous & Low-Resource Languages

These languages are not supported by commercial MT services. champollion provides the tooling for language communities to build their own methods under OCAP principles.

	Language	Code	Google	LLM	Coached	Script	Status
🪶	Plains Cree	crk	❌	✅	✅	🔤 SRO→Syllabics	🚧 Under development
🌄	Quechua	qu	✅	✅	—	—	Runasimi. Evidential suffixes.

:::info Plains Cree is under active development The register, coaching infrastructure, script converter, and evaluation harness for Plains Cree are all functional, but the translation pipeline has not yet been released. We are working with language communities under OCAP principles to ensure quality before release. See Support a Low-Resource Language for the full story — and how you can contribute. :::

:::tip Adding more low-resource languages champollion's method plugin system is designed for this. A language community can build a custom translation method, host it under their own control, and serve it via the API method. The Method Leaderboard tracks scores for any language pair — build a method, run the harness, and claim the top score. :::

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Constructed Languages

Conlangs are supported via LLM registers and optional script converters. They use the same infrastructure as real languages — the quality gate, coaching system, and script conversion pipeline work identically.

	Language	Code	Google	LLM	Script	Notes
🖖	Klingon	tlh	❌	✅	🔤 Romanization→pIqaD	PUA font required. Marc Okrand vocabulary.
🧝	Sindarin (Tolkien Elvish)	x-elvish-s	❌	✅	🔤 Latin→Tengwar	CSUR PUA font required.
🏴‍☠️	Pirate English	x-pirate	❌	✅	—	Register only. Nautical metaphors.
🦸	Kryptonian	x-kryptonian	❌	✅	🔤 Latin→Kryptonian	PUA font required.
🎭	Shakespearean English	x-shakespeare	❌	✅	—	Register only. Thee/thou, -eth/-est forms.
🐸	Yoda-speak	x-yoda	❌	✅	—	Register only. OSV word order.

See Conlangs, Scripts & Orthography for PUA font requirements, Unicode limitations, and how to add your own.

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Language Presets

The init wizard supports preset names for quick setup. You can mix presets with individual codes.

Preset	Expands To
european	fr, de, es, it, pt, nl
asian	ja, zh, ko
global	fr, es, de, ja, zh, ko, pt, ar
nordic	da, fi, nb, sv

# Mix presets with individual codes
champollion init
# → Target languages: european, ja
# → Resolves to: fr, de, es, it, pt, nl, ja

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Adding Any Language

champollion can translate to any language your LLM knows — the table above just lists languages with built-in register presets. To add an unlisted language, include its BCP-47 code in your config:

{
  "languages": {
    "sw": {},
    "am": {
      "register": "Formal Amharic. Professional register with Geʽez script."
    }
  }
}

The LLM will translate using its training knowledge of the language. Setting a register gives you control over tone, formality, and orthographic conventions. See Configuration for details.

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Language Cards

Each built-in language has a Language Card — a unified JSON file in shared/language-cards/ containing all metadata: registers, formality, method support, typography rules, genealogical classification, linguistic challenges, and NLP resources.

Unified Card Architecture

Each card is loaded eagerly at import. There is no separate reference tier — all data lives in a single file per language. Cards are enriched from authoritative sources:

Source	Data
Glottolog	Family classification, ancestry chain, Glottocode
WALS	Genus classification, typological features
CLDR	Script, direction, plural rules, typography
ISO 15924	Script codes

Key Card Fields

Field	What It Contains
nativeName	Endonym — the language's name for itself, in its own script (e.g., ქართული, Runasimi)
classification	Genealogical anchor: family, genus, full ancestry chain from Glottolog
contactInfluences	Universal contact history — borrowing layers, superstrates, substrates
Formality system	T-V distinction, speech levels, keigo, particles, etc.
Register presets	Named LLM prompt presets specific to the language's character
Method support	Which translation APIs support this language
Gender guidance	Grammatical gender rules and inclusive writing tips
Script/direction	ISO 15924 script code and RTL/LTR
Rules	Typography (quotes, spacing), capitalization, plural categories
glottocode	Canonical Glottolog identifier for cross-referencing
dataSources	Provenance tracking (e.g., ["glottolog-5.3", "cldr-48"])

Scaffolding a New Language Card

Use the generator to scaffold a card from authoritative data sources (IANA, CLDR, Glottolog):

# Preview what would be generated
node scripts/generate-language-card.mjs sw --dry-run

# Generate a unified card
node scripts/generate-language-card.mjs sw

The generator auto-populates metadata (codes, script, direction, plurals, quotes, method support, classification) and marks linguistic judgment fields as TODO for human curation.

Using Preset Keys

Instead of writing full register text, you can use a preset key name:

{
  "languages": {
    "fr": "casual-tu",
    "ko": "formal-hapsyo",
    "ja": "polite"
  }
}

Champollion resolves the key to the full register prompt. Run npx champollion init to see available presets for each language.

Example Presets

Language	Presets	Default
French	formal-vous, casual-tu	formal-vous
Korean	polite-haeyo, formal-hapsyo, casual-hae	polite-haeyo
Japanese	polite, formal-keigo, casual	polite
German	formal-Sie, casual-du	formal-Sie
Thai	neutral-professional, polite-male, polite-female	neutral-professional
Spanish	neutral-professional, formal-usted, casual-tuteo	neutral-professional

See Contributing a Language Card for the full spec, including field validation and PR checklist.

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See Also

• Configuration — full config reference including language setup
• Translation Methods — how each method works
• Script Converters — deterministic script conversion pipeline
• Conlangs, Scripts & Orthography — PUA fonts, Unicode, adding conlangs
• Support a Low-Resource Language — building methods for underserved languages