Why do Undertale and Deltarune officially support only two languages? Toby Fox answers

Why do Undertale and Deltarune officially support only two languages? Toby Fox responds

People have noticed — both Undertale and Deltarune are released officially in only English and Japanese. For Deltarune that’s partly explained by its ongoing development, but Undertale has been out for over a decade, so the shortage of official translations feels odd to many.

He recently responded to that exact concern.

In short: he green-lit only the Japanese version because he could personally supervise it — Toby Fox reads Japanese, so he could check phrasing and keep the translation close to his intent. In other tongues he can’t do that, i.e., he can’t verify nuances or work side‑by‑side with a translator, so he won’t make those versions “official.”

That said, he’s fine with fans translating the PC versions. As he put it, since he doesn’t understand other languages, letting the community handle localization without the pressure of being “officially” perfect is useful — fans filling the gap where he can’t provide direct oversight.

Regarding Deltarune, the explanation is practical: localizing now would pull time and people away from finishing the game, delaying release. Fox framed it as a resource issue rather than a refusal.

He also answered two other hot topics: the Undertale concert stoplist and merch prices, questions that came up a lot from Latin American fans. He said he didn’t pick concert cities — that’s on organizers — but they’ve heard about the region’s enthusiasm. As for high shipping fees, the problem is logistics (i.e., shipping, customs, handling), and he admits current costs are too steep. He mentioned Fangamer is looking into ways to reduce those fees, so there’s at least movement toward a fix rather than silence on the matter.