Languages

Mailr is available in seven languages: English, German (Deutsch), Spanish (Español), French (Français), Brazilian Portuguese (Português (Brasil)), Russian (Русский) and Simplified Chinese (中文（简体）). Speakr has the same seven. All seven are available in the web app, both Android apps and the texts written by the server (notifications, Activity, error messages, approval cards, invitation mail).

No setup is required. Each person picks a language under Settings → You → Region → Language; see Settings and, for the phone apps, App settings.

Where	With a language chosen	With Automatic
Web	that language	the browser's language, when Mailr has it; else English
Android apps	that language	the phone's language, or the language picked for the app in the phone's settings (Android 13 and later)
Activity, account health, error messages	that language	the language of the browser they are viewed in
Notifications, digests, invitation mail	that language	English

Traditional Chinese (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau) is not given Simplified Chinese: those browsers and phones get English. Any Portuguese is given Brazilian Portuguese.

Translation method

The translations were drafted with a local language model and checked by machine: every placeholder, tag and format argument is kept, each language has its plural forms (Russian has four, Chinese one), and short labels stay short. A sample of each language was then read and corrected by hand. In each language, one form of address is used throughout: du in German, tú in Spanish, vous in French, você in Portuguese, вы in Russian and 您 in Chinese.

A text that failed the checks three times is shown in English. The words Ambrose, Mailr, Speakr, Screener and the names of other products stay as they are.

Corrections to wrong or clumsy texts are welcome: see "Fix a translation" below.

Fix a translation

The texts are in the repository:

Part	File
Web	frontend/src/locales/<language>.json
Server	backend/mailr/i18n/<language>.json
Android	android/<module>/src/main/res/values-<qualifier>/strings*.xml

Edit the text in place, keeping every {{placeholder}}, %1$s and <tag>. At the next run of the translation tool, the edit is kept as a hand-made translation and is never replaced. Approval card texts on the web and in strings_server.xml are copies of the server's: edit them in backend/mailr/i18n/<language>.json and run tools/i18n_server_texts.py.

Translate new texts, or add a language

Texts that are new or changed since the last run are translated with tools/i18n_translate.py, on all three surfaces, with any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. No hosted model is needed; the texts are short UI strings.

export MAILR_I18N_ENDPOINT=http://my-llm:8000/v1
tools/i18n_translate.py                  # every language
tools/i18n_translate.py --lang de,fr     # some languages
tools/i18n_translate.py --check          # no model: exit 1 when a text is missing or stale
tools/i18n_translate.py --offline        # no model: fill new texts with English for now

MAILR_I18N_ENDPOINT is the endpoint's address, required for a run with a model. MAILR_I18N_MODEL names the model (the first one the endpoint serves by default), and MAILR_I18N_API_KEY is sent when a key is required at the endpoint. These three are variables of the script, not of the Mailr server, so they are not in .env. At most four requests are in flight (--concurrency, 2 by default).

To add a language:

1. Add it to tools/i18n/glossary.json: its name, its Android resource qualifier, its plural forms, the form of address, and one translation for each product term (Inbox, Archive, Snooze, Label…).
2. Run tools/i18n_translate.py --lang <tag>. The web, server and Android files are written, and a cache is kept in tools/i18n/cache/<tag>.json.
3. List the tag in android/notes-core/src/main/res/values/i18n.xml and in both res/xml/locales_config.xml files (app and notes). No list is needed for the web and the server: their new files are found automatically.
4. Have someone who reads the language look at a sample, fix what is wrong in the output files, and run the tests (npx vitest run src/i18n, tests/test_i18n.py, TranslationsTest on Android).