The Delft-FEWS GUI is available in multiple languages, the default language of Delft-FEWS is English. Changing the Language file of the Delft-FEWS GUI is configured in the global.properties file. The following lines need to be present in the global.properties file.

  • LANGUAGE=EN

It is also possible to have a variant to the selected language. The variant language files will use the default language values with for some GUI elements a different text. In the example below the country is set to Australia (AU) with a variant set to BOM.

  • COUNTRY=AU
  • VARIANT=BOM

The language files in the FEWS code will then have the following names.

  • messages_en.properties
  • messages_en_AU_BOM.properties

The following languages are currently available for the Delft-FEWS GUI:

  • Dutch (nl)
  • German (de)
  • Spanish (es)
  • Chinese (LANGUAGE=zh, COUNTRY=CN)
  • Chinese / Taiwan (LANGUAGE=zh, COUNTRY=TW)
  • Indonesian (in)
  • Vietnamese (LANGUAGE=vi or LANGUAGE=vn)

Adding a Language files to Delft-FEWS

When a new GUI language is required, the default English language captions need to be translated to this new language. The language files for all GUI's need to be translated. This example will explain the steps when adding the French (fr) language to Delft-FEWS GUI.

  • Open the Delft-FEWS JAR file (In Total Commander, select the \bin\Delft_FEWS.jar file and press CTRL+PGDN.
  • Select the file: \bin\Delft_FEWS.jar\nl\wldelft\fews\gui\messages_en.properties and copy the file to a local folder on your drive.
  • Rename the file to messages_fr.properties.
  • Translate the parts of the file after the '=' sign and save the file.

  • Copy the messages_fr.properties file to the Delft-FEWS patch filen: \patch.jar\nl\wldelft\fews\gui\messages_fr.properties
  • Make a change to the global.properties file of your FEWS application.
    • LANGUAGE=fr
  • Start the Delft-FEWS application


There is a language file for every Delft-FEWS display, not all displays are used in each Delft-FEWS application. When a new language is added to Delft-FEWS it is important to translate the language files for the most important Delft-FEWS GUI

  • FEWS Explorer: \nl\wldelft\fews\gui\messages_en.properties
  • FEWS Login: \nl\wldelft\fews\gui\login\messages_en.properties
  • Dashboard: \nl\wldelft\fews\gui\plugin\dashboard\messages_en.properties
  • Forecast Manager Display: \nl\wldelft\fews\gui\plugin\forecast\messages_en.properties
  • Spatial Display: \nl\wldelft\fews\gui\plugin\grid\messages_en.properties
  • Manual Forecast Display: \nl\wldelft\fews\gui\plugin\manualforecast\messages_en.properties
  • System Monitor: \nl\wldelft\fews\gui\plugin\systemmonitor\messages_en.properties
  • Time Series Display: \nl\wldelft\fews\gui\plugin\timeseries\messages_en.properties


Once the most important Language files are translated, please send the files to Deltares Product Management (fews-pm@deltares.nl) so we can share these with the larger Delft-FEWS community and add the languge to the next Delft-FEWS release.

A complete set of language files from the latest Delft-FEWS 2020.02 release is attached.


Delft-FEWS is developed in Java, a Java Runtime is provided in the Delft-FEWS \jre folder. Currently the following languages are included in the Java JRE: de,es,fr,in,nl,vi,zh. New languages can be added to the Java JRE on request. The Java JRE languages are required for the default Java displays that are used to open files, save files, etc..




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