dsh-locale-fr — French for the DeepSeek Harness web UI
A language pack for DeepSeek Harness (dsh).
It puts the browser UI in French: sidebar, composer, command menu, execution trail,
settings and every section of them — 1163 strings across 33 namespaces.
It ships a second, separable layer that translates two community plugins which hard-code
their Chinese labels (see Third-party layer).
Screenshots and status: this pack is used daily against @deepseek-ai/dsh 0.1.1-rc.2
and is designed to keep working on 0.1.2+.
Why this exists
dsh ships zh and en only. That is a shipping choice, not an architectural limit:
@deepseek-ai/dsh-client-locale exposes a real extension point.
- dsh 0.1.2-rc.1 and later —
ctx.locale.addLanguage({ id, label, fallback }) accepts any
BCP 47-ish tag whose fallback chain terminates at en. The pack registers fr, and
Français shows up in Settings → General → Language with no UI change at all. The choice
persists in ~/.dsh/settings.yaml as locale.preference: fr.
- dsh 0.1.1-rc.2 and earlier — the catalog is frozen to
zh/en and setLocale("fr")
throws. The pack then patches the single function that reads a string,
lookup(namespace, key), to consult French first. Same result, one caveat: French is
always active, since there is no catalog entry to switch away from. Remove the plugin to
get English back.
The pack detects which case it is in. Nothing to configure.
An untranslated key always falls back to English, never to Chinese.
Install
# from a checkout
dsh plugin --profile web add "link:/path/to/dsh-locale-fr"
# or straight from git
dsh plugin --profile web add "github:GaaaorkOrga/dsh-locale-fr"
Web profile only — it is a browser-side plugin, and it mounts itself through its own
cordis.patch.yml, so headless and tui profiles never reference it and start without it.
On dsh 0.1.2+, pick Français in Settings → General → Language. Or set it directly:
# ~/.dsh/settings.yaml
locale:
preference: fr
No file under node_modules is ever modified. A dsh update cannot wipe the translation.
How it is built
dictionaries/fr.json is the single source of truth. lib/client.js is generated from it —
never edit the generated file:
python3 tools/build-client.py
Adding or fixing a string
Edit dictionaries/fr.json, rebuild, reload the page. Keys mirror the namespaces dsh
registers (conversation, chat, trajectory, settings.models, …).
Placeholders in braces — {count}, {toolName}, {command} — are part of the contract and
must be copied verbatim, spelling included.
Refreshing after a dsh upgrade
A new dsh release adds strings. They show in English until you harvest and translate them:
# 1. Harvest the English dictionaries from the dsh you actually RUN
python3 tools/harvest-dsh-dictionaries.py \
~/.npm/_npx/<hash>/node_modules/@deepseek-ai english.json
# 2. Diff against dictionaries/fr.json, translate the delta however you like,
# merge it back into dictionaries/fr.json
# 3. Rebuild
python3 tools/build-client.py
Harvest from the version you run, not from whatever happens to sit in a cache — namespaces
and keys move between releases. That mistake cost a debugging round here.
Porting to another language
Nothing in the machinery is French-specific:
- Copy
dictionaries/fr.json to dictionaries/<lang>.json and translate the values.
- In
tools/build-client.py, change LANGUAGE (id, label in its own language, fallback)
and the "fr" passed to locale.register.
- Rebuild, install, done.
Pull requests adding a language are welcome — say so in the issue first so we can agree on
whether it lives here or in a sibling package.
Third-party layer
@welsione/dsh-model-router (0.0.8) and dsh-model-selector (0.5.0) never call ctx.locale:
every label is a string literal. No language pack, in any language, can reach them — it is
an integration gap, not a translation gap. The router's whole settings page stays Chinese, and
the model chip's label is visible on every screen.
dictionaries/third-party-fr.json holds 575 Chinese fragments and their French, applied by a
MutationObserver on what is displayed. Fragments, not sentences: those plugins assemble their
labels at runtime.
Guard rails:
- nothing outside ideographs is touched;
- never inside an input, a code block or the conversation transcript;
- only fragments known to those two plugins are replaced, so arbitrary text — including
Chinese a user pasted — is left alone by construction;
- the French produced holds no ideograph, so the observer converges;
- only mutated nodes are re-swept, batched per animation frame. A full-document walk on every
frame was measured against 720 mutations in 2 s while an answer streams in.
This layer is a stopgap. Upstream requests are filed —
welsione/dsh-model-router#1,
DeepVite/dsh-model-selector#1 — and
it should be deleted as soon as either lands. To disable it now, empty the file:
echo '{}' > dictionaries/third-party-fr.json && python3 tools/build-client.py
To regenerate it for a newer plugin version:
python3 tools/harvest-hardcoded-cjk.py \
~/.dsh/profiles/web/node_modules/@welsione/dsh-model-router/lib/client.js \
~/.dsh/profiles/web/node_modules/dsh-model-selector/lib/client/index.js > runs.json
Known gaps
Out of reach of any language pack, because they do not go through the locale registry:
- Slash-command descriptions (
/compact, /export, …) — served by the host.
- Access-mode names (Read Only / Workspace Write / Full access) — rendered from host
identifiers.
A word about dsh versions
latest moved from 0.1.1-rc.2 to 0.1.2-rc.1 on 2026-09-04. That release drops
settingsNamespace and installSettingsSection from @deepseek-ai/dsh-settings, which
dsh-model-selector and @welsione/dsh-model-router still import. The plugin loader
aggregates the failures and dsh refuses to start — it does not merely skip the two plugins.
Unrelated to this pack, but you will meet it if you run those plugins; pin your dsh version
until they catch up.
Contributing
Issues and pull requests welcome — translation fixes, other languages, or taking over
maintenance. Code comments are in English; the dictionaries are plain JSON, no build chain
beyond Python 3.
License
MIT — see LICENSE.
En français
Ce paquet met l'interface web de DeepSeek Harness en français : 1163 étiquettes réparties en
33 familles de textes. dsh ne livre que le chinois et l'anglais, mais son registre de langues
prévoit officiellement des langues supplémentaires — ce paquet s'y branche, sans modifier un
seul fichier livré par l'éditeur.
- Installation :
dsh plugin --profile web add "github:GaaaorkOrga/dsh-locale-fr", puis
choisir Français dans Réglages → Général → Langue (dsh 0.1.2+). Sur une version
antérieure, le français s'applique tout seul.
- Corriger un mot : éditer
dictionaries/fr.json, relancer python3 tools/build-client.py,
recharger la page. lib/client.js est engendré — ne jamais l'éditer à la main.
- Une étiquette non traduite retombe en anglais, jamais en chinois.
- Une seconde couche traduit l'affichage de deux modules communautaires qui écrivent leurs
libellés chinois en dur, hors du système de langues. Elle est provisoire : deux demandes ont
été déposées auprès de leurs auteurs.
Contributions bienvenues, y compris pour d'autres langues ou pour reprendre la maintenance.
