Making a VRChat world multilingual
Short answer: keep every language of a given string together in one row, not in separate arrays, and store the player’s choice so they never have to pick twice.
Why most translation setups rot
Section titled “Why most translation setups rot”The usual first attempt is two arrays: one of keys, one of translated strings, and the same index in both. It works until someone inserts a line in the middle of one array and not the other. From that point every translation is shifted by one, and nothing errors — the world simply displays the wrong text.
The problem is structural: nothing ties a key to its translations except a number that any edit can break.
A table where one row holds the key and all its languages cannot desynchronise, because there is no second list to keep in step.
Text is rarely enough
Section titled “Text is rarely enough”Signs, posters, rule boards and UI buttons are often images with text baked in. A translation system that only swaps strings leaves half your world in one language.
Whatever you use should be able to swap a sprite or texture on the same key mechanism as a string.
Remembering the choice
Section titled “Remembering the choice”Asking a returning visitor to pick their language again, every single visit, is the detail that makes a world feel unfinished.
The VRChat SDK offers PlayerData for exactly this since version 3.10 — it persists per
player, across sessions, without any of the older workarounds.
What about the editor itself?
Section titled “What about the editor itself?”Worth separating two things:
- The world’s text, seen by visitors — that is what this page is about.
- The tools you build with, seen by you and your team in the Unity Inspector.
FOS Essentials translates both. Its inspectors, tooltips and menus exist in English, French, Spanish and German, chosen per machine in the Hub.
Doing it without writing Udon
Section titled “Doing it without writing Udon”FOS Localization gives you a real table editor: one row per key, one column per language, for text and images alike. It imports and exports CSV, so a translator can work in a spreadsheet and hand the file back, and it remembers the player’s choice between visits.
The pack is free and requires only FOS Essentials Core.