Evidentia 4 shipped with a feature we didn’t announce: the program’s interface can now be displayed in languages other than English. This is something users have been asking for for a while, Spanish and Danish in particular. We kept quiet about it because it isn’t finished in the way we’d like it to be. Today we’re opening it up, labelled honestly as experimental, and asking for your help to make it better.
In addition to English, Evidentia 4 can now display in Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish.
Why It’s “Experimental”
The translations were produced with AI. Evidentia is a small, independent product, and paying professional translators to cover every menu, dialog, and message in several languages simply isn’t within our budget. AI gave us a usable first pass, but no native speaker has reviewed it yet. Rather than sit on it until that’s affordable, we’d rather put it in the hands of the people who can tell us where it’s wrong.
How to Change the Language
- Click the Preferences icon on the toolbar and go to the General tab.
- Find the Language drop-down.
- Choose your language from the list. Evidentia will ask you to confirm the change.
- Click Continue. Evidentia restarts in the new language.
Before you switch, read this: changing the language also replaces Evidentia’s reference tables (claim types, citation templates, sentence templates and source types) with versions in the new language. Any customizations you’ve made to those tables, including citation templates you built yourself, will be replaced. If you’ve put work into custom templates, make a backup first.
To switch back to English, repeat the steps and choose English. New users will also see a language picker the first time Evidentia starts.
What to Expect
- Wording may be awkward or wrong. Some translations will be overly literal, oddly phrased, or simply incorrect.
- Genealogy terms are the weak spot. Words like source, citation, claim, evidence, and proof have precise meanings in Evidentia’s methodology. An AI translator may choose the everyday word instead of the term genealogists in your language actually use. If something reads as technically wrong rather than just clumsy, that’s exactly what we want to hear about.
- Some text may still appear in English, particularly error messages and newer screens.
- Layouts may crowd or truncate. Translated labels are often longer than the English originals and may not fit cleanly everywhere.
- Documentation is English only. The Evidentia Companion and online help have not been translated.
- It may change. As an experimental feature, translations will be revised, and the list of languages may grow or shrink depending on interest and feedback.
Help Us Get It Right
If you use Evidentia in one of these languages — especially as a native speaker — your corrections are the most valuable thing we can get. When you spot a problem, please send us:
- the language you’re using
- where it appears (the screen or dialog)
- the text as it’s shown
- what it should say instead
A screenshot helps a lot. Send it through the Support Portal, the Contact Us page, or post it in the Evidentia Users group on Facebook. Corrections will be folded into future releases.
We’d also like to know if there’s a language you’d use that isn’t offered yet, and whether the feature is useful to you at all — that tells us where to spend limited time.
Thank you for trying it, and for your patience while it grows up.