Truleaf.org is now available in 7 languages: English, Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, and Ukrainian.
This isn't just interface translation. The plant database itself, nutrient profiles, growing parameters, pest management notes, is localised with region-appropriate terminology and units. A grower in Sao Paulo and a grower in Amsterdam see the same data, in their own language, with the conventions they expect.
Why multilingual matters
Agriculture is one of the most globally distributed human activities. People grow food everywhere. But most digital growing resources are in English, and even those are concentrated in a few countries.
When we looked at our analytics, we saw growers from over 40 countries. Many of them were navigating an English interface to get data they needed for plants in their local context. That's a friction we could remove.
How we approached it
We didn't just run the interface through a translation API. Plant science terminology matters. The word for "blossom end rot" in Portuguese isn't a literal translation of the English, it's a specific term that agronomists in Brazil use. Getting those right required working with people who know both the language and the domain.
For each language, we built localised plant data files that include:
- Common names as they're actually used in that region
- Nutrient terminology that matches local agricultural practice
- Unit conventions (metric everywhere, but formatting differs)
- Growth stage descriptions that make sense to local growers
The languages
English remains the primary language with the most complete dataset.
Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese are separate localisations. The agricultural vocabulary differs enough between Brazil and Portugal that a single "Portuguese" would serve neither well.
Spanish, French, and Dutch cover significant growing communities across Europe and Latin America.
Ukrainian was a deliberate choice. There is a large and active community of growers in Ukraine, and very few agricultural tools available in Ukrainian. We wanted to serve them.
What's next
More languages are on the roadmap. We're looking at German, Italian, and Turkish based on where our growers are. If you'd like to help with localisation for your language, reach out.
Growing doesn't have a language barrier. The tools shouldn't either.