LibLocaleOverride — Per-Addon Language Override for WoW Addons

A small embeddable library that lets an addon offer its own in-game language picker — so a player can read your addon in Dutch while their WoW client runs in English, without touching any other addon. It also bundles fonts for scripts WoW can't render (e.g. Thai), and refreshes the UI on a switch without a /reload.

The Problem

WoW addons normally lock their language to the game client via GetLocale(). A player whose client is English can't read a supported addon in their native language, and addons can't offer languages WoW doesn't ship at all. The one existing override — the global GAME_LOCALE (and the AddonLocale addon that wraps it) — is all-or-nothing: it retargets every AceLocale addon at once, and it can't switch at runtime.

The Solution

LibLocaleOverride keeps every registered locale table and merges them on demand (an English baseline + the chosen language on top, so a partial translation still falls back cleanly) — per addon and switchable live. Picking a language for one addon never affects another. A bundled-font manager covers non-Latin scripts, and a change callback lets widgets refresh in place.

For Developers

Embed via LibStub and register your locale tables:

local LLO = LibStub("LibLocaleOverride-1.0")
LLO:RegisterLocale("MyAddon", "enUS", enUSTable, true)  -- baseline
LLO:RegisterLocale("MyAddon", "nlNL", nlNLTable)
LLO:SetStore("MyAddon", getOverrideFn, setOverrideFn)   -- your SavedVariable
LLO:ApplyStored("MyAddon")                               -- at login
local L = LLO:GetLocale("MyAddon")                       -- read L[key] at BUILD time

Add it to your addon as an external dependency — one canonical copy across your whole addon family. Read L[key] when you build a widget, never frozen at load, so a live language switch takes effect.

Recent Updates

v0.1.0 (2026-06-11)

Initial scaffold: LibStub registration, the full API surface, a single multi-version TOC, MIT license, and packaging. Reference consumer: FastGuildInvite.

License

MIT. Original implementation — contains no third-party code beyond the public-domain LibStub.