[Proposal] Adding Official Chinese Translation for Babylon.js Website and Documentation

Tutorials and tips
1

Hi Babylon.js Team and Community,

I would like to propose adding official Chinese translations for the Babylon.js website and core documentation.

Reasoning:

China has the largest developer population in the world (over 10 million developers). Many of them are interested in Web 3D but face a language barrier when learning Babylon.js.

An official Chinese translation would significantly lower the entry barrier, accelerate adoption, and attract more contributors from the Chinese-speaking community.

While community-driven translations exist, they often lag behind or become outdated. An official, maintained version would ensure consistency and quality.

Proposed Approach:

  • Use a community translation platform like Crowdin or Weblate.

  • Start with the homepage and “Getting Started” guides, then expand to API references and advanced topics.

  • I (and I believe many others) would be happy to volunteer and help with the translation work.

Questions for the Community:

  1. Does the team already have any plans or roadmap for i18n support?

  2. Is the community interested in collaborating on this effort? If so, what would be the best way to coordinate?

  3. Are there any technical constraints we should be aware of, such as how the documentation site is built and deployed? (e.g., static site generator, CI pipeline)

Looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts! :folded_hands:

2

I use an embeddable bar on a web page to translate into different languages.
Maybe this could be integrated on the site and in the documentation?

Which gives:
translate

And all the code to do that is quite small:

<script>
	function googleTranslateElementInit() {
		new google.translate.TranslateElement({
			pageLanguage: 'en',
			includedLanguages: 'en,fr',
			autoDisplay: false
		}, 'google_translate_element');
	}	
</script>
<script src="https://translate.google.com/translate_a/element.js?cb=googleTranslateElementInit"></script>

You can add as many languages ​​as needed:
includedLanguages: 'en,fr,es,ja,ko,th,vi,zh-CN,zh-TW,pt,ru'

// Html:
<label class="inline-label">Traduction Language : </label>
<div id="google_translate_element" style="width:160px;"></div>

Css:
/*
GOOGLE TRANSLATE
*/
#google_translate_element {position:relative}
#google_translate_element span {display: none!important; }
#google_translate_element:after {
	content: "";
	bottom:0;
	left:0;
	width:100%;
	background:transparent;
	position: absolute;
	z-index: 1;
	height: 40%;
}
.goog-te-banner-frame.skiptranslate {
	display: none !important;
	visibility: hidden !important;
	color: transparent !important;
}
html > .skiptranslate, body > .skiptranslate, #Contenu > .skiptranslate, .Contenu > .skiptranslate, #corp > .skiptranslate {
    display: none !important;
	color: transparent !important;
}
.goog-te-combo {
    width: 160px;
    height: 20px;
}
.goog-logo-link {
    display:none !important;
}
.goog-te-gadget{
    color: transparent !important;
}
#goog-gt-tt, .goog-te-balloon-frame{display: none !important;}
.goog-text-highlight { background-color: transparent !important; background: none !important; border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important;}
font {
  background-color: transparent !important;
  box-shadow: none !important;
}
.goog-te-gadget-icon {
	display: none !important;
	color: transparent !important;
}
.goog-tooltip {
	display: none !important;
}
.goog-tooltip:hover {
	display: none !important;
}
.goog-te-gadget-simple a {
	text-decoration: none !important;
}

The translations are quite correct.
It’s quite easy to integrate into a site or documentation page and would be useful for several languages.

3

Let me add @RaananW who is responsible of the website.

4

Joining the party! Sorry for being a little late.

Interesting proposal! I have no problem whatsoever with i18n support for our docs page. Even better - I fully support that! This will help non-english speakers enjoy Babylon.js for sure.

However, quoting Austin Powers, “having said that, I do have some thoughts”. Mainly the “official” support for any specific language.

  1. We are not translators, not have the time to translate 600+ documents to another language. What I can do is have a very smart AI agent run over all document and translate them as they see fit. This will, however, not be any better than turning on Google translate on the site you are currently visiting.
  2. There will also be the question of moderation. Let’s say we add support to a language, and then get a pull request from a community member to change it. If we don’t have people in the team that know the language we will have hard time reviewing it. No one will be able to add incorrect (or malicious) information to the website in english, but I am pretty sure that, if someone wanted to add a wrong sentence in… Japanese, for example, we will have a hard time catching that.
  3. How do we decide what languages we add? Again, an AI agent will be able to translate to any language, so why X and not Y?

And again - I am not referring to a specific language, it’s for any language in general.

Let me think about it and also discuss it internally with the team and see what they think. Technically, it’s more than possible. we can have redirects to /LANGCODE/* according to your browser language. It will have slightly higher deployment costs (per language), but that’s negligible at the moment.

5

@RaananW Did you see what I was proposing? A Google translate toolbar would be the right solution I think.
The translations are relatively correct to understand.
So no maintenance to do: everything is automatically translated even after updating the documentation.

https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/proposal-adding-official-chinese-translation-for-babylon-js-website-and-documentation/63941/2?u=dad72

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