KF2: Change Voice Language and Keep Text in English

This guide, the author's first, is for players who want to change the language of what they hear in Killing Floor 2 (characters, the Trader, bosses) while reading the text in another language. For related localization problems in the first game see restoring the Russian language in Killing Floor.

Step 1: choose the language

In your Steam library right-click Killing Floor 2, open Properties and the Language tab, and choose the desired language (Japanese in the example).

Choosing the language in the Steam properties.

Start the game once to initialize the language pack, then close it. A Japanese player named Eiran_Kisotsu discovered that this step is required.

Step 2: make the text English

Go to steamapps/common/killingfloor2/KFGame/Localization and find the folder matching the language you chose.

The Localization folders.

Rename that folder, for example by adding "bck" to its name.

The renamed folder.

If you want English text, that is all: the text stays English while the dub uses the language you chose.

Step 3 (optional): text in a third language

To have the text in another language, for example Italian, make a copy of the Italian folder, rename the copy to the name of the language selected in Step 1, and inside it change the extension of all files to match that name.

The copied folder with matching file extensions.

When it is done like this, the game text is Italian and the characters speak Japanese.

Notes

The author considers this approach safe because every change can be reverted without effort. More efficient methods may exist, but this one is easy to follow.