datahub-project
Add Native UI Internationalization (i18n) Support with User-Configurable Translation Files
Hello DataHub team and community,
First of all, thank you for the excellent work on DataHub — it is a fantastic platform.
We would like to request native internationalization (i18n) support for the DataHub UI, allowing the interface to be translated into different languages using external, user-configurable translation files (e.g. JSON, YAML).
Currently, translating the UI requires forking and maintaining a custom frontend build, which is difficult to sustain across upgrades. This limits adoption in public institutions, international organizations, and multilingual environments.
We suggest adding:
- A standard i18n framework for the frontend (e.g. react-i18next or similar)
- External translation files per language (e.g. en.json, es.json, ca.json, etc.)
- A configuration option to select the default UI language
- Optional per-user language preference
- A fallback mechanism to English if a key is missing
This would allow:
- Community-driven translations
- Easier maintenance across releases
- Broader international adoption of DataHub
Our organization operates in a multilingual environment and requires the UI to be available in a local language for non-technical users. This requirement is common in Public administrations
Without native i18n support, adoption becomes significantly harder. I would be happy to:
- Help validate the approach
- Contribute translations
- Collaborate on testing
Thank you very much for considering this request. We believe this enhancement would greatly benefit the global DataHub community.
Best regards,
Marta
Just want to mention an excellent tool for community-driven translations: https://weblate.org
Works really well at projects like Jellyfin, *arrs and many others
Hello Marta,
this is an awesome suggestion and something that has been on and off our internal roadmap for a while. There is no doubt that i18n would be an amazing improvement that would help us reach much larger global community. I also love the suggestion of using weblate. We could use that as well as community reviewed AI translations.
Having said that, it would be a massive undertaking. Currently, DataHub has ~3,500 components with an estimated 27,000-41,000 translatable strings across 77+ feature modules. Adding support for react-i18next or similar would mean not just translating the strings but refactoring all of that (and disrupting everybody's development work in process). We would need to carefully proceed in phases and start with the highest impact components.
I would encourage everyone interested in this feature to start getting involved, comment on this issue and even provide patches. The more interest is there in it, the more likely it will get built.
