Changing Languages In Pokemon Scarlet And Violet
The language options in Pokemon Scarlet And Violet are straightforward if you know where to look, but Nintendo made it slightly less obvious than it should be. The games support Japanese, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Russian on the Switch. You pick a language when you start a new save file, and it sticks with whatever text and voiceover you chose. Here is how it actually works. When you boot the game and reach the initial setup screen where it asks you to enter your name and choose a language, that is your only window to change things freely. After you create your save data, the language is locked to that profile. You can go into the Switch system settings and change the console language, but it will not update the game text unless you start a completely fresh save file.
Important Notes On Pokemon Scarlet And Violet Languages
The bigger issue people run into is that voice and text are tied together at the initial selection. If you pick English, you get English voice acting with English text. There is no option to toggle between text-only and voice-enabled after creation, or to mix languages like getting Spanish text with English audio. The games handle this at the ROM level, so the language pack is baked in from the start. I learned this the hard way. Back when I was setting up Pokemon Scarlet for a nephew who is more comfortable reading Japanese text but speaks English at home, I spent about forty minutes trying to figure out why he kept hearing English voice lines. The problem was not the game being buggy or glitched. The Japanese version of the ROM includes English voice lines as a secondary audio track, and I had assumed the game would default to the text language for audio too. It does not. Switching the audio language requires going into the in-game options menu before starting a battle or cutscene, which is buried under Settings. If you are playing a localized version, the audio language matches the text language by default and you cannot decouple them unless you are on the Japanese build. Another thing most guides do not mention is that the language selection screen itself changes depending on your console's region. If you have a Japanese Switch, the initial setup may show different default language orderings and some language options might be hidden entirely. I ran into this when testing a Korean ROM on a unit that was set to the European region code. The Korean language option did not appear at all until I matched the console region to a Korean region code, which is not something most people have reason to do.
The practical workaround for people who want to play in a language that is not showing up is to create a second user profile on the Switch and set that profile to the target console language before launching the game. The game reads the active user profile's language preference, not just the system-wide setting. This means you can have your main profile in English and a secondary profile in German without touching your existing save files. Start the game while logged into the German profile and you will get the German language option on the setup screen. There is a downside to this approach that nobody likes to talk about. The eShop region is also tied to the console profile, so creating a German profile means you cannot use any digital content linked to your original region account. If you are playing physical cartridges, this does not matter since the game data is on the cart. But if you have DLC or purchased anything from the eShop on one region, switching profiles effectively locks you out of that content until you log back into the original profile. Voice lines are another area where the languages differ in quality and completeness. The English voice acting is fully recorded for nearly all dialogue, but the Korean version has significantly less voice content despite having full text localization. The Chinese versions, both simplified and traditional, have sparse voice acting that only covers a fraction of the spoken lines. If voice quality matters to you, stick with English, Japanese, or the European languages. The Chinese and Korean variants are perfectly playable but you will notice the silence during cutscenes.
Get the Full Details
Here is a counter-intuitive point: the Japanese version is often considered the most complete for speedrunning and technical purposes because the text strings are slightly shorter than the English localization. This means dialog boxes render faster, battle text appears sooner, and certain sequence-breaking routes that rely on text timing actually work more consistently on the Japanese build. People who optimize their runs tend to use the Japanese ROM even if they cannot read the language, because the gameplay frame data is subtly better. Another common pitfall is assuming that saving and deleting a file lets you change languages. It does not. The language lock applies at the save file level, not the profile level. Even if you delete every save file on your account, the next time you launch the game the language option will default back to whatever you chose the first time, and you will have to manually scroll through it again to pick something different. The game remembers your previous selection and auto-highlights it. For people who want to play multiple languages without juggling profiles, the cleanest method is to use the Nintendo Switch's game copy feature. You can duplicate your game card or title to the console storage, then create separate user accounts on the console with different system languages. Each account can create its own save file in its own language, and they will not interfere with each other. I use this setup myself. One account runs Japanese for the text length advantage, another runs English for the full voice lines, and a third runs Spanish just to test localization accuracy on certain key terms. Each save is completely separate and you can switch between them instantly from the Home menu.
If you are looking for a download link for a language pack or a tool to change languages post-save, there is not really a legitimate one. The language is written into the game files at build time and there is no official patch from Nintendo or Game Freak that converts one language version to another. Any third-party tool claiming to do this is modifying the ROM directly, which voids any chance of online play and risks corrupting your save data. The profile-based method described above is the only safe approach. The bottom line is that the language system in these games is functional but rigid. Pick your language carefully before you commit to a save file. Use separate console profiles if you need to play in multiple languages. And do not waste time trying to patch or mod the language after the fact because it will break more than it fixes.
