languages

Languages

Launchstation ships nine built-in languages and can load an external .LNG file that overrides individual strings. The language applies to dashboard navigation, Settings labels, common actions, file-operation progress and the classic tools.

Choosing a language

Open Settings > System > Language and pick one from the list (names are shown in their own language). The change applies immediately and takes part in the Save/Discard session; the choice is stored as language = ... in LAUNCHELF.CNF.

Language	Shown as	language = value	Source file
English (default)	English	english	Lang/ENG.LNG
Spanish	Espanol	spanish	Lang/SPA.LNG
French	Francais	french	Lang/FRE.LNG
Italian	Italiano	italian	Lang/ITA.LNG
Polish	Polski	polish	Lang/POL.LNG
Portuguese	Portugues	portuguese	Lang/POR.LNG
Brazilian Portuguese	Portugues Brasileiro	brazilian	Lang/PTBR.LNG
German	Deutsch	german	Lang/GER.LNG
Hungarian	Magyar	hungarian	Lang/HUN.LNG

An omitted, blank or unrecognised value falls back to English. The loader also accepts short forms such as en, eng, br and the numeric index.

What is and is not translated

• Translated: dashboard tab names, Home and Applications labels, Settings groups, options, values and help, common dialog buttons, the file-operation overlay (Pasting file, Remaining size, Completed items N / M) and the classic tool strings.
• Never translated: file and folder names, application titles and descriptions, bookmarks, paths, device identifiers and protocol names. Network Host (host:) means files shared by a computer running the PS2Link host service; it is separate from the UDPFS server entry.
• Some extended help and specialist dialogs still use English.

External .LNG files

Set Settings > System > Language > Language file (LANG_FILE) to a .LNG file. It is loaded on top of the selected built-in language: any string it does not define keeps the built-in text, and existing files remain compatible.

// comment lines start with //
lang(468, Dashboard_Home, "Start")
lang(469, Dashboard_Applications, "Programs")

• Each entry is lang(index, Name, "text"). The index (0–676 in this build) is what matters; the symbolic name is ignored. The built-in files in Lang/ list every index.
• Indexes 0–467 are the original classic strings and are never renumbered; indexes 468–676 are the dashboard labels (names begin Dashboard_), appended so older external files keep working.
• Escapes: \n, \r, \t, \" and \\. A trailing // comment after the closing parenthesis is allowed.
• A syntax error or an index beyond the table makes the whole file be ignored and the built-in text stays.
• Dashboard strings that contain format conversions (for example %s or %d) are only accepted if the translation uses the same conversions in the same order; otherwise English is used for that string.

How dashboard labels are matched

The dashboard looks up each interface label in a sorted table (Lang/DASHBOARD.inc) and replaces it with the current language's string, so changing language or loading an external file never leaves stale text. Only interface labels opt in; text read from the storage (names, metadata, titles) is drawn as it is.

Characters and fonts

The built-in language files are plain ASCII (accented letters are written without accents, which is why the picker shows names such as Espanol and Portugues), so they render with any dashboard font. An external .LNG may use extra characters only if the active font has them: the System font covers the Latin-1 characters used by language files and can be replaced by an external .FNT (Customize theme > Text); arbitrary TTF files are not loaded on the console. Game and save titles stored as Shift-JIS are decoded for display in the File Browser's title modes. See Themes.

See also Settings and Configuration.