# Supported Languages in PaddleOCR: A Complete Guide to 100+ Multilingual Models

> Explore PaddleOCR's extensive language support with over 100 multilingual models. Discover supported languages and easily configure them for your projects.

- Repository: [PaddlePaddle/PaddleOCR](https://github.com/PaddlePaddle/PaddleOCR)
- Tags: tutorial
- Published: 2026-03-03

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**PaddleOCR supports over 100 languages across its model families, including 80 languages in the base multilingual model, 106 in PP-OCRv5, and 109 in PaddleOCR-VL, configurable via the `lang` parameter in Python or `--lang` flag in CLI.**

The PaddlePaddle/PaddleOCR repository delivers production-grade optical character recognition for diverse global scripts. Understanding the **supported languages in PaddleOCR** is essential for accurate text recognition, as the framework handles Latin, Cyrillic, Asian, and right-to-left languages through specific abbreviation codes defined in the source documentation and character dictionaries.

## Language Coverage by Model Generation

PaddleOCR organizes language support across multiple model families, with each generation expanding the number of available scripts.

### PP-OCRv3 and PP-OCRv4 (80 Languages)

The core multilingual recognition models support **80 languages** as documented in [`docs/version2.x/ppocr/blog/multi_languages.en.md`](https://github.com/PaddlePaddle/PaddleOCR/blob/main/docs/version2.x/ppocr/blog/multi_languages.en.md). This baseline set covers major world languages including Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, and numerous European and Indic scripts.

### PP-OCRv5 (106 Languages)

The latest PP-OCRv5 generation expands coverage to **106 languages**, adding support for additional Latin-script languages and low-resource dialects. The complete enumeration resides in [`docs/version3.x/algorithm/PP-OCRv5/PP-OCRv5_multi_languages.en.md`](https://github.com/PaddlePaddle/PaddleOCR/blob/main/docs/version3.x/algorithm/PP-OCRv5/PP-OCRv5_multi_languages.en.md).

### PaddleOCR-VL (109 Languages)

The vision-language variant, PaddleOCR-VL, provides the broadest coverage with **109 languages**, integrating multilingual capabilities with visual understanding as detailed in [`docs/version3.x/algorithm/PaddleOCR-VL/PaddleOCR-VL.en.md`](https://github.com/PaddlePaddle/PaddleOCR/blob/main/docs/version3.x/algorithm/PaddleOCR-VL/PaddleOCR-VL.en.md).

## Language Abbreviation Reference Table

The following table presents the complete mapping of language names to their corresponding abbreviation codes used in the PaddleOCR API. These abbreviations are passed to the `lang` parameter in Python or the `--lang` flag in CLI commands.

| Language | Abbreviation | Language | Abbreviation |
|----------|--------------|----------|--------------|
| Chinese & English | `ch` | Arabic | `ar` |
| English | `en` | Hindi | `hi` |
| French | `fr` | Uyghur | `ug` |
| German | `german` | Persian | `fa` |
| Japanese | `japan` | Urdu | `ur` |
| Korean | `korean` | Serbian (latin) | `rs_latin` |
| Chinese Traditional | `chinese_cht` | Occitan | `oc` |
| Italian | `it` | Marathi | `mr` |
| Spanish | `es` | Nepali | `ne` |
| Portuguese | `pt` | Serbian (cyrillic) | `rs_cyrillic` |
| Russian | `ru` | Bulgarian | `bg` |
| Ukrainian | `uk` | Estonian | `et` |
| Belarusian | `be` | Irish | `ga` |
| Telugu | `te` | Croatian | `hr` |
| Sanskrit | `sa` | Hungarian | `hu` |
| Tamil | `ta` | Indonesian | `id` |
| Afrikaans | `af` | Icelandic | `is` |
| Azerbaijani | `az` | Kurdish | `ku` |
| Bosnian | `bs` | Lithuanian | `lt` |
| Czech | `cs` | Latvian | `lv` |
| Welsh | `cy` | Maori | `mi` |
| Danish | `da` | Malay | `ms` |
| Maltese | `mt` | Adyghe | `ady` |
| Dutch | `nl` | Kabardian | `kbd` |
| Norwegian | `no` | Avar | `ava` |
| Polish | `pl` | Dargwa | `dar` |
| Romanian | `ro` | Ingush | `inh` |
| Slovak | `sk` | Lak | `lbe` |
| Slovenian | `sl` | Lezghian | `lez` |
| Albanian | `sq` | Tabassaran | `tab` |
| Swedish | `sv` | Bihari | `bh` |
| Swahili | `sw` | Maithili | `mai` |
| Tagalog | `tl` | Angika | `ang` |
| Turkish | `tr` | Bhojpuri | `bho` |
| Uzbek | `uz` | Magahi | `mah` |
| Vietnamese | `vi` | Nagpur | `sck` |
| Mongolian | `mn` | Newari | `new` |
| Abaza | `abq` | Goan Konkani | `gom