Localize Your Game Menu With PlayKovo SDK getLanguage

If your game has text in it, players who read another language will notice. The PlayKovo SDK gives you one small helper for this: getLanguage(), which returns the browser language. This post shows the pattern from the SDK documentation, explains what to do with a language you have not translated and lists the details that make a menu feel finished: fallbacks, plurals, text length and saved choice.

According to the SDK reference, getLanguage returns the browser language. It does not guess the player's country and it does not know which languages your game supports. That part is up to you. A browser can report values such as en, tr or a regional form such as en-US, so do not compare the whole string without looking at what you get.

const supported = ["en", "tr", "es", "de"];
const detected = window.PlayKovoSDK.getLanguage();
const language = supported.includes(detected) ? detected : "en";
renderMenu(translations[language]);

Two ideas are in these four lines. First, list your supported languages explicitly. Second, fall back to a default, here English, when the detected language is not on the list. A game with a missing translation should show readable text, not empty buttons or the word undefined.

If the call returns a value like pt-BR and you support only pt, the exact comparison fails. A small helper solves it:

function pickLanguage(detected, supported, fallback = "en") {
  const code = String(detected || "").toLowerCase();
  if (supported.includes(code)) return code;
  const base = code.split("-")[0];
  return supported.includes(base) ? base : fallback;
}

Test it with an empty value too. If the call fails or returns nothing, the helper still gives you the fallback.

The browser language is a guess. A player may use a computer in one language and want to play in another. Add a language option in your settings, and save the choice with the SDK's storage; see cloud save with a local fallback. On the next visit, a saved choice wins over the detected language.

Problem	Why it happens	Fix
Text overflows buttons	German and Turkish words can be longer than English ones	Design buttons that grow, or test with the longest language
Squares or missing letters	The font has no glyphs for accented or non-Latin letters	Choose a font with full coverage, and check each language
Wrong plurals	"1 coins", "2 coin"	Use a function per language instead of adding an s
Text baked into images	It cannot change with the language	Keep text out of images, or make one image per language
Mixed languages on one screen	A string was missed	Keep all strings in one table and log keys that have no translation

If you add fonts for extra languages, remember that they are assets in your ZIP and need the right to be used. See clearing art, audio and fonts. Font files also add to your download size; our post on what goes in a ZIP covers the limits.

The language inside your game is one part. The title, description, instructions and controls that appear on the game's page are another. Write those clearly in English first, since that is how the site presents games; translate in-game text for the languages you can maintain well. A badly machine-translated menu is worse than a clear English one.

1. List the languages you support and a fallback.
2. Handle regional codes and empty values.
3. Give the player a manual language switch and remember it.
4. Test the longest language on the smallest screen.
5. Check fonts for every language.
6. Keep all text in one place.

The helper is described in the JavaScript SDK reference. If your game runs without the SDK, you can still use the browser's own language value, but then you lose the consistent behaviour inside PlayKovo.