Publication language
Quiet ships in fourteen languages and is fully translatable. Set your publication language and every word the theme adds, and every date, follows.
Every word Quiet adds to your site (Subscribe, Read next, Previous, the share labels, the empty states) comes from a translation file rather than being written into the design. Fourteen languages ship with the theme, and adding another is one file.
Setting the language
Go to Settings → General.
Set Publication language to your language code, for example de, fr, es or pt-BR.
Save, then reload your site.
Dates follow the same setting, so a German site reads 23. August 2026 where an English one reads August 23, 2026.
The languages that ship
Danish (da), German (de), English (en), Spanish (es), French (fr), Canadian French (fr-CA), Italian (it), Norwegian Bokmål (nb), Dutch (nl), Polish (pl), Portuguese (pt), Brazilian Portuguese (pt-BR), Swedish (sv), Turkish (tr).
A handful of words stay in English on purpose
Platform names are not translated: Bluesky is Bluesky in every language. Beyond those, each file is fully translated. If you spot a phrase that reads awkwardly in your language, tell us and we will fix it in the next release.
Right-to-left languages
Quiet is a left-to-right theme in this release. Right-to-left languages are not supported yet; we are testing them for a future version.
Adding a language
If your language is not in the list, you can add it yourself. It is a text file, not code.
Unzip quiet.zip and open the locales folder.
Copy en.json and rename the copy to your language code, for example cs.json.
Translate the value on the right of each line. Leave the key on the left exactly as it is.
Zip the theme folder again and upload it, or send us the file and we will ship it with the theme.
{
"Subscribe": "Abonnieren",
"Read next": "Weiterlesen",
"Share": "Teilen"
}Placeholders
Some lines contain a placeholder that Quiet fills in. Keep it exactly as written, including the punctuation around it.
| Placeholder | Example line | Becomes |
|---|---|---|
{name} | "All posts by {name}" | All posts by Ellen Marsh |
{total} | "{total} posts" | 47 posts |
%number%, %total% | "Image %number% of %total%" | Image 2 of 11 |
% | "% min read" | 6 min read |
A missing placeholder shows as an error
If you delete or rename a placeholder, the theme has nowhere to put the number and the line renders wrong. Translate around it rather than through it.
Partly translated files
A key you leave in English simply renders in English. Nothing breaks, so translating the twenty phrases a reader actually meets first is a perfectly good afternoon's work.
Related
- For developers, for how the translation files are checked before release.
Membership
How Quiet handles members: the free preview that fades into a signup card, the Members and Paid labels, locked films, and where readers sign up.
Code injection
Restyle any part of Quiet with a few lines of CSS in Ghost's code injection. What the stable handles are, how to use the theme's own colours, and what not to touch.