Koha Available Translations

Koha supports over 100 language translations, making it one of the most internationally accessible library management systems available.

Available Translations

Europe

Language	Code	Script	Notes
Basque	`eu`	Latin	-
Belarusian	`be-BY`	Cyrillic	Belarus
Bulgarian	`bg-Cyrl`	Cyrillic	-
Catalan	`ca-ES`	Latin	Spain
Croatian	`hr-HR`	Latin	Croatia
Czech	`cs-CZ`	Latin	Czech Republic
Danish	`da-DK`	Latin	Denmark
Dutch (Belgium)	`nl-BE`	Latin	Belgium
Dutch (Netherlands)	`nl-NL`	Latin	Netherlands
English (Great Britain)	`en-GB`	Latin	United Kingdom
English (New Zealand)	`en-NZ`	Latin	New Zealand
Esperanto	`eo`	Latin	International auxiliary
Estonian	`et`	Latin	-
Faroese	`fo-FO`	Latin	Faroe Islands
Finnish	`fi-FI`	Latin	Finland
French (Canada)	`fr-CA`	Latin	Canada
French (France)	`fr-FR`	Latin	France
Galician	`gl`	Latin	Spain
German (Austria)	`de-CH`	Latin	Switzerland
German (Germany)	`de-DE`	Latin	Germany
Greek	`el-GR`	Greek	Greece
Hungarian	`hu-HU`	Latin	Hungary
Icelandic	`is-IS`	Latin	Iceland
Irish	`ga`	Latin	Ireland
Italian	`it-IT`	Latin	Italy
Latvian	`lv`	Latin	-
Norwegian Bokmål	`nb-NO`	Latin	Norway
Norwegian Nynorsk	`nn-NO`	Latin	Norway
Occitan	`oc`	Latin	Southern France
Polish	`pl-PL`	Latin	Poland
Portuguese (Brazil)	`pt-BR`	Latin	Brazil
Portuguese (Portugal)	`pt-PT`	Latin	Portugal
Romanian	`ro-RO`	Latin	Romania
Russian	`ru-RU`	Cyrillic	Russia
Scottish Gaelic	`gd`	Latin	Scotland
Serbian	`sr-Cyrl`	Cyrillic	-
Slovak	`sk-SK`	Latin	Slovakia
Slovenian	`sl-SI`	Latin	Slovenia
Spanish	`es-ES`	Latin	Spain
Swedish	`sv-SE`	Latin	Sweden
Turkish	`tr-TR`	Latin	Turkey
Ukrainian	`uk-UA`	Cyrillic	Ukraine
Welsh	`cy-GB`	Latin	Wales

Asia & Middle East

Language	Code	Script	Notes
Albanian	`sq-AL`	Latin	Albania
Arabic	`ar-Arab`	Arabic	-
Armenian (Eastern)	`hy-Armn`	Armenian	-
Armenian (Western)	`hyw-Armn`	Armenian	-
Assamese	`as-IN`	Bengali	India
Azerbaijani	`az-AZ`	Latin	Azerbaijan
Bengali	`bn-IN`	Bengali	India
Chinese (Simplified)	`zh-Hans-CN`	Han (Simplified)	China
Chinese (Traditional)	`zh-Hant-TW`	Han (Traditional)	Taiwan
Dzongkha	`dz`	Tibetan	Bhutan
Georgian	`ka`	Georgian	-
Hebrew	`he-Hebr`	Hebrew	-
Hindi	`hi`	Devanagari	India
Indonesian	`id-ID`	Latin	Indonesia
Interlingua	`ia`	Latin	Auxiliary
Japanese	`ja-Jpan-JP`	Japanese (Kanji, Kana)	Japan
Kannada	`kn-Knda`	Kannada	India
Kazakh	`kk-KZ`	Cyrillic	Kazakhstan
Khmer	`km-KH`	Khmer	Cambodia
Korean	`ko-Kore-KP`	Hangul	North Korea
Kurdish	`ku-Arab`	Arabic	-
Lao	`lo-Laoo`	Lao	-
Malay	`ms-MY`	Latin	Malaysia
Malayalam	`ml`	Malayalam	India
Marathi	`mr`	Devanagari	India
Mongolian	`mon`	Cyrillic	-
Burmese	`my`	Myanmar	-
Nepali	`ne-NE`	Devanagari	Nepal
Persian (Farsi)	`fa-Arab`	Arabic	Iran
Dari (Afghan Persian)	`prs`	Arabic	Afghanistan
Sindhi	`sd-PK`	Arabic	Pakistan
Sinhala	`si`	Sinhala	Sri Lanka
Tamil (India)	`ta`	Tamil	India
Tamil (Sri Lanka)	`ta-LK`	Tamil	Sri Lanka
Telugu	`te`	Telugu	India
Tetum	`tet`	Latin	East Timor
Thai	`th-TH`	Thai	Thailand
Tibetan	`bo-CN`	Tibetan	China
Turkmen	`tk`	Latin	Turkmenistan
Urdu	`ur-Arab`	Arabic	Pakistan
Uzbek	`uz`	Latin	Uzbekistan
Vietnamese	`vi-VN`	Latin	Vietnam

Africa

Language	Code	Script	Notes
Amharic	`am-Ethi`	Ethiopic	Ethiopia
Kinyarwanda	`rw-RW`	Latin	Rwanda
Swahili	`sw-KE`	Latin	Kenya

Pacific

Language	Code	Script	Notes
Inuktitut	`iu-CA`	Canadian Aboriginal	Canada
Inuktitut (Latin)	`iq-CA`	Latin	Canada
Māori	`mi-NZ`	Latin	New Zealand
Breton	`pbr`	Latin	Brittany, France
Tahitian	`ty`	Latin	French Polynesia
Tagalog	`tl-PH`	Latin	Philippines
Tuvaluan	`tvl`	Latin	Tuvalu

Using Language Codes

In CloudFormation Deployments

When deploying Koha via CloudFormation templates, use the InstallLanguages parameter:

# Single language
InstallLanguages: es-ES

# Multiple languages (comma-separated)
InstallLanguages: es-ES,fr-FR,de-DE,it-IT

Important:

English (en) is always installed by default
Use exact codes from the tables above
Separate multiple languages with commas (no spaces)
Language files are installed during initial deployment

Changing Languages After Installation

To add or update translations after deployment:

Via SSH (if KeyPair configured):

sudo koha-translate --install es-ES
sudo koha-translate --update es-ES

List installed languages:
```
sudo koha-translate --list
```
Via Koha Admin Interface:
- Navigate to Administration → System Preferences
- Go to I18N/L10N section
- Configure language and opaclanguages preferences

Language Selection in Koha

Staff Interface

Login screen: Choose language from dropdown
User preferences: Set default language per staff account
System-wide: Configure in I18N/L10N preferences

OPAC (Public Catalog)

Top navigation: Language selector (if multiple languages enabled)
Per-user: Browser language detection
System preference: opaclanguages controls available OPAC languages

Translation Coverage

Translation completeness varies by language:

100% Complete: Major European languages (French, German, Spanish, Italian)
90%+ Complete: Most actively maintained languages
Partial: Newer or less-maintained translations

Check current translation status at Koha Translation Project.

Contributing Translations

Want to improve Koha translations?

Join the community: Koha Translation Wiki
Translation tool: Pootle Translation Server
Mailing list: Subscribe to koha-translate mailing list

Script Information

Koha supports multiple writing systems:

Latin (Western Europe, Americas)
Cyrillic (Eastern Europe, Central Asia)
Arabic (Middle East, North Africa)
CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)
Indic (South Asian scripts)
Others (Hebrew, Georgian, Armenian, Thai, etc.)

Right-to-left (RTL) languages like Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian are fully supported with appropriate interface mirroring.