No modding experience, two days, and a Croatian translation that still needs a human touch
Croatian Webflow designer and developer Mislav Repinac used Codex to create a personal Croatian translation of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, despite having no previous modding experience.
Repinac began with the menus as a small test. After seeing them translated within roughly 30–40 minutes, he expanded the project to the entire game. He says the playable translation took around two days, covering menus, subtitles, dialogue choices, quests, books, the bestiary, and other text.
The result is not a finished public localization. Repinac says some dialogue still uses the wrong grammatical gender, but reading the game’s books, lore, and quest descriptions in Croatian made the experience feel more natural. He also supplied Fix Gaming Channel with a gameplay recording for verification and gave us permission to edit and use it.
For more from the game’s creative history, read our interview with former The Witcher 3 writer Jakub Szamałek.
See the Croatian Translation in Action
Watch Mislav Repinac’s gameplay footage of The Witcher 3 running with his Croatian translation. The recording was supplied by Repinac and published with his permission.
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Interview With Mislav Repinac
What made you want to play The Witcher 3 in Croatian, and what pushed you from “someone should do this” to trying it yourself?
The idea just came to me one day: it would be cool to play The Witcher 3 in Croatian, especially because reading the in-game books and lore was sometimes harder for me, as English isn’t my first language. I looked into it and found a Serbian translation on Nexus Mods. Although it was fine, there are subtle differences between Serbian and Croatian that I found distracting. Everything from potion names to character names had also been translated, which made it hard for me to recognise what was what. I’m used to the original English names, and I wanted to keep those intact. That’s when I decided to see whether Codex could translate the game into Croatian in a way that suited my preferences.
Before this project, what experience did you have with coding, modding or translation?
I have a good amount of experience with HTML and CSS, and some experience with JavaScript, but nothing beyond that. I had absolutely no modding experience, I’d never done it before. I had translated song lyrics into Croatian, but that was quite different from what I did here.
For readers who aren’t technical, how did you get it working? What did Codex actually do, and what did you have to handle yourself?
I’m not particularly technical when it comes to this either. I simply opened the Codex desktop app, selected the “Work” tab and asked whether translating the game was possible. Codex asked for the game’s installation directory, and once I provided it, it confirmed that it could do it. I then asked it to start with something simple, like the menus. Around 30 – 40 minutes later, the menus were translated, and that’s when I decided to try the entire game.
How long did it take to get a version you could play, and did the project cost you anything?
Around two days, although it might have been quicker with Codex set to a higher speed. It cost me around €100 because I had to upgrade to the Pro plan with five times the usage allowance. Before that, I was using the basic €20 plan, but I ran out of usage very quickly.
What is translated at this stage—menus, subtitles, dialogue choices, quests or other text—and what is still unfinished?
Everything is translated, even the epilepsy warning. I found that funny because the warning is part of a video rather than a text file, but somehow Codex managed to translate that too. The translation is complete, although some of the wording and grammar still need polishing.
How did you check whether the Croatian was accurate and natural? Was there a particularly funny or difficult mistake involving a joke, character name or bit of Witcher terminology?
While playing, I noticed that the main issue was grammatical gender, which affected the immersion a little. Croatian has three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine and neuter, and certain word forms change depending on who is speaking or being referred to. The translation sometimes used feminine forms for Geralt or masculine forms for female characters.
I suspect this could be improved by asking Codex to review the dialogue with more context about who is speaking and who they’re talking about, but it didn’t bother me enough to go back and fix it.
Did playing in Croatian change how you experienced the game? Tell us about a scene or moment where you really noticed the difference.
I already speak English well and have been playing games in English for years, so that was never a major problem. Still, experiencing a game I love in Croatian, something I hadn’t thought would be possible, made it much more enjoyable.
The difference was especially noticeable when reading the bestiary, books and quest descriptions. I no longer had to stop and think about what an unfamiliar word meant or work it out from the surrounding text, everything felt more natural. Codex did an amazing job with those parts. The main area that fell short was the dialogue, where it sometimes used the wrong grammatical gender.
Is this staying a personal project, or are you hoping to make it available to other players?
For now, it will stay a personal project because it isn’t perfect. If a remaster is released, I might return to my conversation with Codex, polish the translation and release it on Nexus Mods.
A Fast Translation Still Needs Human Review
Repinac’s project is not a finished public Croatian localization of The Witcher 3. It is a playable personal translation that demonstrates both sides of the process: Codex handled a large amount of text quickly, while dialogue involving grammatical gender still needs context-aware human checking.
You can learn more about Mislav Repinac and his Webflow work on his official website.
Related Reading
Jakub Szamałek Talks Inner Space, Rebel Wolves, and Life After The Witcher 3
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Gets New Expansion Songs of the Past in 2027
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition Arrives on Xbox Game Pass
Written by Ronny Fiksdahl, Founder & Editor-in-Chief of Fix Gaming Channel.
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