Loc files

Loc files (anything ending in .loc — vanilla puts them under text/, mods conventionally use text/db/ or text/) hold the localisation strings the game shows to the player. The Loc editor is a simplified DB editor with three columns: key, text, and tooltip.

The columns

• Key. The string the game uses to look up the entry. Must be unique within the Pack. Conventionally namespaced (e.g. units_descr_short_text_my_unit).
• Text. The actual displayed string, in whatever language this loc file is for. Supports the engine’s inline tags ([[col:red]], [[/col]], etc.) — RPFM doesn’t validate them, but Diagnostics will catch obviously broken pairs.
• Tooltip. Unknown. Historically called tooltip for some reason.

Editing

Same controls as the DB editor: row add/remove/clone, find & replace, filter, sort by column, paste from spreadsheets, TSV round-tripping. The text columns are wide by default since most rows have multi-word values.

Diagnostics for locs

Several entries in the Diagnostics panel target locs specifically:

• Empty key / empty text — usually a typo or an accidental row.
• Duplicated key — two rows with the same key in the same Loc file.
• Invalid escape sequences — usually [[col:…]] tags without a matching closer.

Run diagnostics after a translation pass to catch the easy mistakes.

TSV workflow for translators

The recommended flow for translating a mod is:

1. Open the mod in RPFM.
2. Use Tools → Translator to extract translatable strings into a structured editor (see Translator) — this is the best path for full mod translations because it integrates with the Total War Translation Hub.

If you really want raw TSV instead, every Loc editor has Export TSV — translate in a spreadsheet, then Import TSV to bring the translation back in.