You’ve spent fourteen hours perfecting your Minecraft modpack’s main menu. The animations are slick, the buttons have that satisfying "thwack" sound when you hover over them, and the background music is just right. Then, a player from Germany or Brazil downloads it. They open the settings, change the game language, and... nothing. Your beautiful custom buttons still say "Start Game" in English. It looks broken. It feels unprofessional. Honestly, it’s the quickest way to make a high-effort project look like a lazy rush job.
Understanding how to make the fancymenu mod translate language settings work correctly isn't just about being "inclusive." It's about technical stability. Minecraft handles localization through .json files, but FancyMenu is a layer sitting on top of that engine. If you don't bridge that gap, your UI stays static. It’s a common headache, but once you get the workflow down, it’s basically second nature.
The Core Problem with Static Text
Most people starting with FancyMenu just use the "Add Text" or "Add Button" tool and type their words directly into the box. Why wouldn't you? It's easy. But that text is now "hardcoded." It’s stuck. Minecraft’s internal translation engine has no idea that "Join Server" is something it needs to swap out when the locale changes to fr_fr.
To fix this, you have to stop thinking about words and start thinking about keys. A translation key is like a variable. Instead of writing "Play," you write something like mymodpack.menu.play. Then, you tell the game what that key means in every language you want to support.
Localization Files are Your Best Friend
You need to head into your modpack’s resources. If you’re using a resource pack (which you should be for custom UI), you're looking for the assets/minecraft/lang folder. This is where the magic happens. You’ll see files like en_us.json.
Inside that JSON file, you define your strings. It looks like this:"mymodpack.menu.play": "Play Game"
Now, back in the FancyMenu editor, when you create a button, you don't type "Play Game." You check the box for "Use Localization Key" and paste mymodpack.menu.play. When the game loads, FancyMenu asks Minecraft, "Hey, what does this key mean in the current language?" If the user is on a Spanish locale, and you’ve provided an es_es.json with that key, it swaps the text instantly. It’s seamless.
Why FancyMenu Mod Translate Language Settings Often Break
Sometimes you do everything right and it still displays the raw key—that ugly mymodpack.menu.play text—instead of the actual word. This usually happens because of a load order issue or a simple typo. JSON is picky. One missing comma and the whole file is toast.
Another thing: capitalization matters. A lot. If your key in the JSON is lowercase but you used a capital letter in the FancyMenu editor, it won't link up. They have to be identical matches.
The "Hidden" Variable Trick
Kinda cool thing about the fancymenu mod translate language workflow: you can actually use vanilla Minecraft keys too. You don't always have to invent new ones. If you want a button to say "Options," you can just use menu.options. Since Mojang has already translated that into like 100 languages, your modpack menu is suddenly translated into 100 languages for free. No extra work.
Advanced Layouts and Multi-Language Support
What happens when a word in German is three times longer than the English version? This is the nightmare of UI design. Your "Play" button looks great, but "Spielen" or something longer might bleed out of the button borders.
FancyMenu has a "Auto-Size" feature for buttons. Use it. If you lock your button width to exactly 100 pixels because it looks "clean," you’re going to have overlapping text the second someone switches languages. You’ve gotta give your elements breathing room.
Dealing with Custom Fonts
If you’re using a fancy custom font for your menu, make sure that font actually supports non-English characters. There’s nothing weirder than seeing a beautiful medieval font for the English text, and then a default, blocky Arial-looking font for the "ñ" or "ö" characters because your custom font file didn't include them.
Real-World Examples from the Community
Look at modpacks like ATM9 or Better MC. They handle this stuff behind the scenes using dedicated resource packs. They don't just "make a menu"; they build a localization framework. They use the fancymenu_data folder correctly.
Actually, speaking of folders, make sure you aren't saving your localizations inside the FancyMenu config folder itself. That's a rookie move. Keep your .json lang files in a separate resource pack or use a mod like KubeJS or OpenLoader to load them. This ensures that when you update the modpack, the user’s language settings don't get wiped or glitched out.
The Logic of Placeholders
FancyMenu also supports placeholders. These are dynamic. You can combine a localization key with a placeholder like ${playername}.
So, your key could be "welcome.message": "Hello, %s!"
And FancyMenu can render that as "Hello, Steve!" in English or "¡Hola, Steve!" in Spanish. It makes the menu feel alive, like it’s actually talking to the player.
Steps to Verify Your Translation is Working
Don't just assume it works. You have to test.
- Load into the main menu.
- Open the Minecraft "Language" settings.
- Switch to something wildly different, like Pirate Speak or Japanese.
- Check every single button.
- If you see a raw string like
menu.custom.button_1, you missed a key.
It’s tedious. I know. But the difference between a "modded game" and a "professional gaming experience" lies exactly in these small details.
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Actionable Next Steps for Your Project
Stop hardcoding text right now. If you have an existing menu, go through it and replace every static text string with a localization key.
Start by creating a v_us.json file in your resource pack. Map out every button name, every hover description, and every title. Once that’s done, you can literally copy-paste that file into a Google Translate tool or give it to a bilingual friend to create es_es.json or fr_fr.json.
Ensure your layout.editor settings in FancyMenu are set to "Variable Width" for any button containing translated text. This prevents the dreaded "text overflow" that ruins screenshots and immersion. Finally, check your font compatibility for Cyrillic or CJK characters if you plan on reaching a global audience. Doing this work upfront saves you from a hundred bug reports later about "broken" UI.