# Localizing Your Theme

Display your theme in your preferred language.

Note

Theme localization only translates the text elements of the theme itself (such as "next" and "previous" links), not the actual content of your documentation. If you wish to create multilingual documentation, you need to combine theme localization as described here with a third-party internationalization/localization plugin.

## Installation

For theme localization to work, you must use a theme which supports it and enable `i18n` (internationalization) support by installing `mkdocs[i18n]`:

    pip install 'mkdocs[i18n]'

## Supported locales

In most cases a locale is designated by the ISO-639-1 (2-letter) abbreviation for your language. However, a locale may also include a territory (or region or county) code as well. The language and territory must be separated by an underscore. For example, some possible locales for English might include `en`, `en_AU`, `en_GB`, and `en_US`.

For a list of locales supported by the theme you are using, see that theme's documentation.

- mkdocs
- readthedocs

Warning

If you configure a language locale which is not yet supported by the theme that you are using, MkDocs will fall back to the theme's default locale.

## Usage

To specify the locale that MkDocs should use, set the locale parameter of the theme configuration option to the appropriate code.

For example, to build the `mkdocs` theme in French you would use the following in your `mkdocs.yml` configuration file:

    theme:
      name: mkdocs
      locale: fr

## Contributing theme translations

If a theme has not yet been translated into your language, feel free to contribute a translation using the Translation Guide.

#### Search

From here you can search these documents. Enter your search terms below.

#### Keyboard Shortcuts

Keys | Action
--- | ---
`?` | Open this help
`n` | Next page
`p` | Previous page
`s` | Search