Switching Blender to Korean menus: where the language setting is, and why English menus are often better

Based on: Blender 5.2 LTS (screenshots from 5.2.1, default shortcuts). Checked in November 2026. All pictures are real Blender screenshots. The red numbers and boxes were added to explain them. Only this guide's pictures show the Korean interface on purpose.

Blender starts with an English interface. You can switch it to another language, such as Korean. There are two places to do it: the Quick Setup that appears the first time you start Blender, and the Language panel in Preferences, which you can open at any time.

This site's Blender guides, and most tutorials, use the English menu names. So besides the steps, this guide explains why English menus are often the better choice, and shows a middle way: English menus with Korean tooltips. At the end there is a Korean-English menu table built only from what the screenshots show.

After this guide you can:

1. Pick a language in the Quick Setup on first start.
2. Find the Language panel in Preferences, change the language and change it back.
3. Tell what each of the four Translate boxes (Tooltips, Interface, Reports, New Data) changes.
4. Match Korean menu names to the English names used in tutorials.

1. Two places to set the language

Blender keeps the interface language in Preferences. Preferences belong to the Blender program, not to your project file (.blend). Once you change the language, every file opens in that language. It is like a house where all the light switches sit on one breaker panel instead of in each room.

2. First start: choose in Quick Setup

Starting point: Blender 5.2 right after installing, on its first start. Installation is in Blender beginner chapter 1.

On the first start, the Quick Setup area sits under the splash image (Figure 1). Here you set the language, theme, keymap, mouse select button and spacebar action in one place.

Figure 1. Quick Setup on first start. ① Language box (Blender screenshot)

Steps:

1. Left-click the Language box (① in Figure 1). A language list opens in three columns (Figure 2).
2. Left-click Korean - 한국어 in the middle column.

Figure 2. Language list. ① Korean - 한국어 (Blender screenshot)

The whole interface changes at once (Figure 3). No restart is needed. The top menus become 파일, 편집, 렌더, 창, 도움말 (File, Edit, Render, Window, Help), Quick Setup becomes 빠른 설정, and the Continue button becomes 계속하기.

Figure 3. Right after picking the language. ① Top menus ② Language box ③ Properties editor (Blender screenshot)

3. Click 계속하기 (Continue). The Quick Setup values are saved to Preferences and the splash closes.

Check: If Blender still shows Korean the next time you start it, the setting was saved. If you closed the splash without Continue, change the language in Preferences (section 3).

3. Any time: the Language panel in Preferences

Quick Setup appears only once. After that, use Preferences.

Starting point: The Korean interface from section 2. If your interface is in English, the order is the same; just read the English names.

Steps:

1. Left-click 편집 (Edit) in the top menu.
2. Choose 환경 설정… (Preferences…) at the bottom (Figure 4). The shortcut is Ctrl+,. Preferences opens in a new window.

Figure 4. Edit menu. ① 환경 설정… (Preferences…) (Blender screenshot)

3. Check that 인터페이스 (Interface) is selected in the list on the left. It is selected when the window first opens.
4. Scroll down on the right to the 언어 (Language) panel (Figure 5). It comes after the Display and Editors panels.

Figure 5. Language panel. ① Language ② Four Translate boxes ③ Date and time format (Blender screenshot)

5. Click the 언어 (Language) box (①) and pick a language. To go back to English, pick English (US).

Changes in Preferences apply at once. If Auto-Save Preferences is on in the menu behind the three-line button at the bottom left of the Preferences window, they are saved when you quit Blender. If it is off, click Save Preferences in the same menu.

In Figure 5, ③ Date Format and Time stay in English even after switching to Korean. The Korean translation does not cover the whole interface yet. Section 5 comes back to this.

4. The four Translate boxes

Under Translate in the Language panel there are four check boxes. Picking Korean turns all four on. Each one translates a different part. Think of a restaurant menu: you can choose separately whether to translate the dish names, the dish descriptions, the kitchen announcements, and the name tags on new dishes.

Figure 6 shows translated tooltips. In the Add menu opened with Shift+A, holding the mouse over the 검색 (Search) row shows a Korean description.

Steps: With the mouse over the 3D Viewport, press Shift+A, then hold the mouse over the search row at the top of the menu. When the description box appears, click outside the menu to close it.

Figure 6. Add menu with a Korean tooltip. ① Description box of the search row (Blender screenshot)

New Data works a little differently. It translates the names of newly created data-blocks. Based on the official manual, with this box on, new objects and materials get Korean names. Existing names do not change. That is why Collection, Camera, Cube and Light in the Outliner stay in English in Figure 7: they were created before the language changed.

Figure 7. ① Interface text is translated ② Existing names stay English ③ Panel and field names are translated (Blender screenshot)

5. Why English menus are often better

A Korean interface feels easier for the first few days. Still, this site recommends the English interface, for these reasons. The Preferences table in Blender beginner chapter 1 gives the same advice.

1. Tutorials, the manual and this site use English menu names. To follow "Object ‣ Apply ‣ Scale" on a Korean screen, you must translate it in your head to "오브젝트 ‣ 적용 ‣ 스케일" every time. The official manual is also written in English first.
2. The translation does not cover everything. As Figures 3, 5 and 7 show, the workspace tabs (Layout, Modeling and so on) and Date Format and Time in the Language panel stay in English. Two languages mix on one screen.
3. Translated names can differ from the words tutorials use. In the Add menu, Empty shows as "비어 있음" (literally "is empty") and Armature as "아마추어" (Figure 6). When a tutorial says "add an Empty", it is hard to find quickly.
4. With New Data on, names get mixed. As in section 4, older objects keep English names and new objects get Korean names. They also differ from names in other people's files and tutorials.

A Korean interface does help in one place: tooltips. When you hold the mouse over an unfamiliar button, reading the description in your own language makes the meaning clear faster.

6. A middle way: English menus, Korean tooltips

Because each Translate box turns on and off by itself, you can mix them. Keep menus in English like the tutorials, and read only the tooltips in Korean. What each box changes in the steps below follows the box descriptions in the official manual.

Starting point: The Language panel in Preferences from section 3 (Figure 5). The language is Korean - 한국어.

Steps:

1. Leave 도움말 (Tooltips) on.
2. Click 인터페이스 (Interface) to turn it off. Menu and button names go back to English.
3. Click 새로운 데이터 (New Data) to turn it off. New objects get English names such as Cube.
4. Set 보고서 (Reports) as you like. When it is on, status bar messages appear in Korean.

When Interface is off, this panel's labels also turn English, so after step 2 the boxes read Tooltips, Interface, Reports and New Data. Keep the language box on Korean - 한국어 so tooltip translation stays on. If you switch the language to English (US), the four boxes turn gray and all translation stops.

7. Korean-English menu table

Use this table when you follow an English tutorial on a Korean screen. It lists only translations that appear in this guide's pictures (Figures 3 to 7).

Note that both the Edit menu and Editing in Preferences show as "편집". If someone says "pick it in 편집" on a Korean screen, use the location to tell which one.

8. Exercises

1. Switch the language in Preferences to Korean - 한국어 and write down the Korean names of the five top menus. Then switch back to English (US).
2. Set up the middle way from section 6 (Korean tooltips only). Hold the mouse over a button in the 3D Viewport header and check that the description appears in Korean.
3. Without looking at the table in section 7, write what "오브젝트 ‣ 적용 ‣ 스케일" is on the English screen.

9. Common mistakes and fixes

Summary

Set the language in Quick Setup or Edit ‣ Preferences ‣ Interface ‣ Language, and keep menus in English to follow tutorials. The next guide covers moving the origin, the point an object turns around.

Next: Moving the origin in Blender

References

• Blender 5.2 Manual: Interface (Preferences) (Language, Translate)
• Blender 5.2 Manual: Splash Screen (Quick Setup on first start)
• Related: Blender interface basics
• Shortcuts: default (Blender) keymap of Blender 5.2.1.
• Pictures: screenshots made in Blender 5.2.1 for this guide.