Grafana OSS — Can we add new languages manually, or must all new languages go through the official Crowdin project?

Grafana
1

Hi Grafana team,

We are using Grafana OSS in a direct, out‑of‑the‑box way — we simply download the official binaries and run them (start/stop).
We cannot rebuild or recompile Grafana from source.

Because of this, we want to clarify how localization can be extended.

Questions:

  1. Is there any supported way to add a new language in Grafana OSS without rebuilding?
    For example:

    • placing a new locale folder under public/locales/<lang>

    • adding translation JSON files

    • restarting Grafana

    Will Grafana detect and load these?
    Or is this not possible unless the language is part of the official release build?

  2. Do all new languages have to go through the official Grafana Crowdin project?
    Since we cannot rebuild:

    • Does adding a language require contributing to Crowdin

    • and waiting for Grafana to include it in the next official release?

    Is Crowdin the only path to get a new language added for OSS users?

  3. Does the “Translate your plugin” feature apply only to plugins?

    • Can plugin translations override core UI strings?

    • Or does it affect only plugin components?

We want to fully understand whether adding a new language is possible when using Grafana OSS as‑is (no custom build), or whether the only supported approach is through contributing to Crowdin and waiting for an official release.

Thanks!

2

Why not?

Antony.

3

Apologies, the phrase I quoted got stripped from my reply. Hopefully this is
clearer now.

" Hi Grafana team,
"
" We cannot rebuild or recompile Grafana from source."

Why not?

Antony.

1 Like
4

Hi Antony,

Thanks for the quick response.

To clarify why we cannot rebuild or recompile Grafana:

We are using Grafana OSS exactly as distributed, by downloading the official binaries and running them directly. Our deployment setup does not involve a custom build pipeline for Grafana itself — we only start/stop the Grafana service as provided.

Because of this:

  • We do not maintain a Grafana source build environment

  • We cannot modify and rebuild the frontend or backend code