> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://developers.deepl.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Language release process

> Here's what API users can expect when DeepL adds translation support for a new language or language variant.

On a regular basis, DeepL adds translation support for new languages or language variants. In this article,
we describe the process we'll follow with a new language or variant release.

## Language codes follow BCP 47

DeepL language codes follow [BCP 47](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5646). A language code always
includes a base language subtag (e.g. `en`, `zh`), and may include additional subtags for script, region,
or variant where needed to distinguish variants. For example:

* `EN-US`, `PT-BR` -- region subtag to distinguish regional variants.
* `ZH-HANS`, `ZH-HANT` -- script subtag to distinguish writing systems.

BCP 47 is an expansive standard, and language codes can vary significantly in structure and length. As DeepL
adds support for more languages and variants, new codes may use any combination of subtags permitted by the
spec. For example, codes like `sr-Cyrl-RS` or `sr-Latn-RS` (Serbian in Cyrillic vs. Latin script, as used in
Serbia) are valid BCP 47 codes -- while DeepL does not support these today, your integration should be able
to handle codes of this form if they are added in the future.

<Warning>
  **Do not hardcode assumptions about the format of language codes.** For example, do not assume that language
  codes will always be exactly two letters, or that a hyphenated code will always be in the format `xx-YY`.
  Instead, always treat the `lang` codes returned by the [/languages endpoint](/api-reference/languages) as
  opaque identifiers. If you need to parse language codes, use a BCP 47-compliant library rather than writing
  custom parsing logic -- the full spec includes subtags for script, region, variant, extensions, and private
  use, and partial implementations are a common source of bugs.
</Warning>

## What happens when a new language is released

### Language release process for v3/languages

The [`/v3/languages`](/api-reference/languages/retrieve-supported-languages) endpoint provides flexibility
to specify which languages are supported by different products and which features are supported by each
language. Languages are added individually to each API resource, and new languages may initially be flagged
as beta before they are stable.

### Language release process for v2/languages

<Info>
  The `/v2/languages` endpoint is deprecated, and may not be extended with all new languages we support.
  You should build your integration to use `/v3/languages` instead.
</Info>

* We will add the language code for the newly supported language or variant to the list on the
  [Supported languages](/docs/getting-started/supported-languages) page in the API documentation. The list
  shows support for text and document translation.
* If a newly added language or variant supports both text and document translation, we will add the language
  or variant to the [`/v2/languages`](/api-reference/languages) endpoint response. The variant code used
  depends on the characteristics of the variant:
  * In some cases, a variant is primarily used in a specific region, and so a region subtag is the best way
    to identify it (e.g. `EN-US`, `PT-BR`).
  * In other cases, a variant is used widely across multiple regions, and so a script subtag is more
    appropriate (e.g. `ZH-HANS`, `ZH-HANT`). The subtag structure will be selected by DeepL on a case-by-case
    basis following BCP 47 conventions.
* In cases where a new language code with a variant duplicates the behavior of an existing language code
  without a variant (e.g. `ZH-HANS` was recently added as a language code for translating into simplified
  Chinese, along with `ZH`):
  * In the [`/v2/languages`](/api-reference/languages) endpoint response, we will continue to return both
    language codes in two separate dicts with the same value in the `"name"` field.
  * For backwards compatibility, we will continue to support the original language code (in this example,
    `ZH`) for text and document translation.
* We will add the language code for the newly supported language or variant to our
  [OpenAPI spec](https://github.com/DeepLcom/openapi/).