dsh-zh-tw-ui
繁體中文 | English
Renders the entire DeepSeek Harness (DSH) Web UI in Traditional Chinese
(Taiwan) — DSH's own copy, third-party plugin copy, and text that later DSH
versions add — by converting the DOM, not by shipping a language pack.
Settings -> General -> Language: 中文 (Simplified) <- the app's own locale
What you actually see: 繁體中文（台灣） <- converted on screen
Because it works at the render layer, it does not have the failure mode that
dictionary-based language packs have: uncovered copy falls back to Simplified
Chinese and the UI looks half-translated.
The problem
DSH ships exactly two locales: zh (Simplified) and en. Using DSH in Taiwan
breaks in three places at once:
- DSH's own UI is Simplified without a language pack;
- third-party plugins (market, sidebar, IM bridges, Agent Teams, …) each ship
their own Simplified dictionaries, which no language pack can reach;
- every DSH release adds copy, so a language pack's dictionary is always one
version behind.
This plugin attacks the shared root cause: whatever produced the text, it is
converted on screen.
Goals / non-goals
Goals
| |
|---|
| G1 | The whole page in Traditional Chinese: DSH itself, third-party plugins, and dynamic content that appears later |
| G2 | Decoupled from the DSH version — a DSH upgrade must not break it |
| G3 | Touches no DSH internals: no dictionary registration, no LocaleRuntime patching, no @deepseek-ai/* peer range — so DSH's compatibility gate can never skip it, and it coexists with other locale plugins |
| G4 | A clear safety boundary: code, editors and anything you type are never altered |
| G5 | Reversible, auditable, tunable (a runtime switch, an override table, a skip marker) |
Non-goals
- Not a language pack: no new entry in DSH's Language list, no change to DSH's
locale setting.
- No translation beyond Simplified → Traditional: English is left alone, no
model calls.
- Does not change stored data — see Limitations.
- Web/desktop clients only: no DOM in TUI or headless profiles.
- Does not convert text painted into a canvas, or cross-origin iframes.
Why not just use another Traditional Chinese plugin?
This is the reason the project exists, so here is the honest version. All figures
were checked on 2026-10-13 from each package's npm manifest or repo README.
| Option | Mechanism | Covers third-party plugins | Relationship with DSH 0.2.0-rc.2 |
|---|
@huanlin/dsh-plugin-better-locale 0.4.3 | registers dictionaries (39 namespaces) | no | peer says ^0.1.5-rc.2 (excludes 0.2.x) → needs a manual exact-version exemption to load |
@mimateinn/dsh-i18n 0.2.6 | dictionaries + Simplified→Traditional character fallback | yes | peer says <0.2.0-0 → blocked by the compatibility gate without an exemption |
dsh-locale-zh-tw (npm, 0.1.1) | patches LocaleRuntime internals | yes | documents itself against the dsh-client-locale@0.1.1-rc.2 shape; degrades silently on mismatch |
dsh-multi-lang-ui 0.1.1 | dictionaries + char table + DOM fallback | yes | peer has no upper bound, passes the gate — mechanically the closest to this project |
iceice666/dsh-locale-zh-tw | dictionaries only (50 ns / 1691 strings) | no (by design, per its README) | — |
| dsh-zh-tw-ui (this project) | pure DOM conversion | yes | no peer dependencies, touches no DSH API |
Each existing approach has a structural weakness:
- Dictionary-based (better-locale, iceice666) — coverage is frozen at the
upstream version the pack was built against. Measured on this machine:
better-locale 0.4.3 ships 39 namespaces while DSH 0.2.0-rc.2 registers about 49
core namespaces, and 17 of them have no Traditional dictionary at all
(
pluginManager, permission, settings.shell, settings.webSearch,
agent-team, voice-input, schedule.manager, …). Worse, its fallback chain
is zh-TW → zh → en, so the gaps render in Simplified, not English — which
is exactly why a language pack can look like "it installed but nothing
happened".
- Core-patching (the npm
dsh-locale-zh-tw) — tightly coupled to DSH
internals and designed to degrade silently: after a DSH update it can simply
stop doing anything, without an error.
- Declared peer ranges — when your DSH version falls outside them, DSH
skips the whole bundle at boot, silently (the on-disk
compatibility.json
exemption list is the fingerprint of working around that).
This project's trade-off: touch no DSH API, work only on the DOM. The price is
that it is a display-layer conversion; what you get is version independence,
coverage of third-party plugins, and failures you can actually see. The full
consequences are listed under Limitations.
Note: dsh-multi-lang-ui overlaps this project functionally and is a valid
alternative. This project deliberately stays smaller and single-purpose: DOM
conversion only — one job, no dictionary to keep in sync, no
@deepseek-ai/* dependency of any kind.
How it works
┌─ DSH's own copy (Simplified)
screen text ────┼─ third-party plugin copy (their own Simplified)
└─ content that appears later (streaming, dynamic panels)
│
▼
DOM text node → OpenCC cn→twp (Taiwan wording) → override table → write back
▲
└─ MutationObserver: re-run on added nodes / changed text
- Engine: OpenCC
cn → twp (Simplified → Traditional with Taiwan vocabulary):
设置→設定, 网络→網路, 软件→軟體, 文件夹→資料夾, 服务器→伺服器, 内存→記憶體,
屏幕→螢幕, 鼠标→滑鼠, 保存→儲存, 搜索→搜尋, 插件→外掛.
- A small override table (
DEFAULT_OVERRIDES in src/convert.mjs) fixes wording
OpenCC misses or renders in a non-Taiwan way: 只讀→唯讀, 超時→逾時, 反饋→回饋,
獲取→取得, 許可權→權限.
<html lang> is set to zh-Hant-TW so the browser picks Taiwan glyph forms.- Memoised per text node, non-Han strings short-circuit, and values are only
written when they actually change — the converter also remembers its own writes,
so it can never ping-pong with React.
Safety boundary: what is never converted
| Target | Behaviour |
|---|
<code> <pre> <kbd> <samp> <var>, CodeMirror / Monaco / xterm / ace / syntax highlighting | subtree and attributes untouched |
<input> <textarea> <select> <option> | only placeholder / title; what you type or pick is untouched |
contenteditable (including rich-text composers) | untouched |
<svg> <math>, <script> <style> <canvas> <iframe> <video> <audio> | untouched |
anything marked data-zh-tw-skip or translate="no" | untouched |
| strings without Han characters (English, kana, digits, code) | passed through |
In other words: code is never rewritten, and copying code behaves exactly as
before.
Install
A. From this repo (the supported path today)
git clone https://github.com/linmino/dsh-zh-tw-ui.git
cd dsh-zh-tw-ui
node install.mjs --profile desktop # 'desktop' is the default; use --profile web for the web profile
install.mjs does exactly four things, all reversible:
- backs the profile's
package.json and cordis.patch.yml up as *.zh-tw-ui.bak;
- appends
dsh-zh-tw-ui to dsh.profile.bundles;
- sets the
locale row's preference to zh (Simplified underneath, Traditional
on screen — this keeps the UI Chinese even if you later remove another language
pack, instead of falling back to English with nothing to convert);
- links
<profile>/node_modules/dsh-zh-tw-ui → this directory.
It runs no package manager, so nothing else in your profile is re-resolved.
Then restart DeepSeek Harness — a new bundle is composed only at boot;
refreshing the page is not enough.
B. From npm (not published yet)
The name dsh-zh-tw-ui is currently free on npm. Once published:
dsh plugin --profile desktop add dsh-zh-tw-ui
Uninstall
node uninstall.mjs --profile desktop
Removes the link, drops the bundle entry and restores both backups. Your plugin
sources are never deleted. Restart DSH afterwards.
Using it
The plugin has no UI and needs no configuration. To tune it, use the DevTools
console of the main window:
__dshZhTw.status() // { version, enabled, textNodes, attributes, skippedSubtrees, passes }
__dshZhTw.off() // stop converting (text already converted stays)
__dshZhTw.on() // resume
__dshZhTw.toggle()
__dshZhTw.refresh() // full re-scan
__dshZhTw.convert('设置') // test one string -> '設定'
The switch is persisted in localStorage['dsh-zh-tw-ui:enabled'].
Change wording: edit DEFAULT_OVERRIDES in src/convert.mjs (a list of
[simplified, traditional] pairs), run node build.mjs, reload the page.
Exclude a region: add data-zh-tw-skip to the element (handy for
side-by-side references or screenshots).
Limitations
An honest list. All of these follow from the display-layer design:
- The screen changes; the data does not. Stored text, what the model
receives, and what is written to files stay as they were.
- Copying code: unaffected (code blocks are excluded).
- Copying prose: you get Traditional, because the copy comes from the screen.
- Your own message bubble renders in Traditional, but the model still receives
exactly what you typed.
- Text painted into a canvas is not converted (charts, image editors,
self-drawn components).
- Cross-origin iframe content is not converted (same-origin iframes are).
- Wording can be contextually wrong. OpenCC is a phrase table; occasional
mismatches happen (proper nouns especially). Tune the override table or mark
the region with
data-zh-tw-skip.
- There is a performance cost. Every text node costs a dictionary lookup.
Memoisation, the non-Han short circuit, and only touching added/changed nodes
keep it small, but very long conversations or huge list pages may show a slight
delay.
- It is not a language pack. No "繁體中文" entry appears in DSH's Language
list. If you switch DSH to English there is no Chinese on screen to convert, so
the effect is "nothing happened".
- Web/desktop clients only — TUI and headless have no DOM.
- A linked install can be pruned. If installing another plugin from the
market later triggers pnpm to re-resolve
node_modules, the link may disappear
(the plugin stops working; DSH itself is unaffected). Re-run
node install.mjs.
- Native chrome is out of scope: DSH Desktop's native menus, tray, and other
non-web UI.
Tests
npm install
npm test
14 tests covering:
- conversion quality (core vocabulary, Taiwan override table), non-Han
passthrough, stability under a second pass;
- skip rules:
code/pre/textarea/input/contenteditable/CodeMirror/Monaco/
svg/data-zh-tw-skip/translate="no", and form controls converting only their
placeholder;
- attribute conversion (
title/placeholder/aria-label/alt);
- live mutations, streaming updates, and settling without further writes
(no ping-pong with React);
off() stops, on() catches up on what it missed;- end to end: the generated
lib/client.js loaded through DSH's real
window.__ModuleLoader__.load(...) protocol, applied to a DOM, including the
runtime switch and persistence;
apply() never throws when there is no DOM (it can never break the client).
Repository layout
build.mjs generates lib/client.js from src/ (with a syntax check)
install.mjs installs into a profile (backup, bundles, locale, link)
uninstall.mjs reverts
lib/index.js host half: a no-op
lib/client.js the generated browser bundle (the only file DSH loads)
src/apply.mjs cordis client plugin body (switch, runtime API)
src/convert.mjs conversion engine + Taiwan override table
src/dom-convert.mjs DOM walk, skip rules, MutationObserver
src/vendor/ vendored opencc-js (byte-identical, licenses included)
cordis.patch.yml inserts the plugin row into DSH's patch layer
test/run.mjs the test suite
License
MIT for this project (see LICENSE). It embeds opencc-js (MIT) and the OpenCC
dictionaries (Apache-2.0) — see THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md
for the file hashes and full license texts.
Credits
- opencc-js — OpenCC in the browser
- OpenCC — the Simplified/Traditional and
Taiwan-vocabulary dictionaries
- And everyone who, tired of a Simplified interface, wrote a plugin
