Multilingual Support

The D&D 5e SRD API supports multilingual responses, allowing you to request translated content in supported languages. English is always the default and fallback — if a translation is incomplete or unavailable, fields fall back to English individually, so responses are always complete documents.

Requesting a Language

Query Parameter (recommended)

Append ?lang={code} to any resource request. This is the recommended approach because it is explicit and cache-friendly.

GET /api/2014/spells/acid-arrow?lang=de

Accept-Language Header

The Accept-Language request header is also supported per RFC 5646. If both a lang query parameter and an Accept-Language header are present, the query parameter takes precedence.

Accept-Language: de

Language codes follow the BCP 47 standard (e.g. de, fr, pt-BR).

Response Behavior

• Translated fields are merged over the base English document on a per-field basis.
• Untranslated fields always retain their English value — responses are never partial.
• The Content-Language response header reflects the requested language when at least one field was translated, or en when no translation exists for that document.

Translatable Fields

Only human-readable text fields are translated. Structural fields (indexes, URLs, numeric values, cross-references) always come from the English base document.

Field	Translatable
name	Yes
desc	Yes
higher_level	Yes
equipment_category.name	Yes
index	No
url	No
Numeric values (HP, range, duration, etc.)	No
API reference objects	No

Discovering Supported Languages

note

/api/{year}/languages lists D&D in-world game languages (Common, Elvish, etc.). /api/{year}/locales is the endpoint for API translation support.

List all supported locales

GET /api/{year}/locales

Returns all languages that have at least some translated content for the given ruleset year.

{
  "count": 2,
  "results": [
    { "lang": "de", "url": "/api/2014/locales/de" },
    { "lang": "fr", "url": "/api/2014/locales/fr" }
  ]
}

Get a specific locale

GET /api/{year}/locales/{lang}

Returns 404 if no translations exist for the requested language.

{
  "lang": "de",
  "url": "/api/2014/locales/de"
}

GraphQL

The optional lang argument is available on entity queries:

query {
  spell(index: "acid-arrow", lang: "de") {
    name
    desc
  }
}

Translation resolution is identical to REST — translated fields are merged before the resolver returns, with English as the per-field fallback.

Contributing Translations

Translations are entirely community-driven. No database access or special tooling is required.

1. Fork the 5e-database repository
2. Create or edit a file at src/{year}/{lang}/5e-SRD-{Collection}.json
3. Include only the translatable fields for each entry — non-translatable fields are sourced from the English base automatically
4. Open a PR — CI validates your translation against the English source

Example — German spell translation entry:

[
  {
    "index": "acid-arrow",
    "name": "Säurepfeil",
    "desc": [
      "Ein schimmernder grüner Pfeil schießt auf ein Ziel in Reichweite ..."
    ]
  }
]

Best Practices

• Start with high-traffic resources (spells, monsters, equipment)
• Keep terminology consistent with existing translations
• Translate complete fields only; omit fields you are not ready to translate
• Validate JSON and run local tests before opening a PR