How to Add Support for a New Language in VMware Workstation
Starting from VMware Workstation Pro version 25H1, official language support has been restricted to English, French, Spanish, and Japanese. The following tutorial explains how to add support for a new language, using Simplified Chinese as an example.
Language files are located in the messages folder within the installation directory. Taking French as an example, the path is C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Workstation\messages\fr, which contains three files: vmappsdk-fr.dll, vmui-fr.dll, and vmware.vmsg. Among these, vmware.vmsg is a plain text file that can be translated directly. The two .dll files can also be localised using software such as Resource Hacker. Create a new directory for your target language (e.g., zh_CN for Simplified Chinese) and place the three localised files into this folder.
There are two methods to load the language pack. The first is a non-invasive approach: open %APPDATA%\VMware\preferences.ini and append a line such as pref.locale = "zh_CN", or launch VMware with the startup parameter --locale zh_CN. However, this method results in incomplete interface localisation, and the Virtual Network Editor will fail to load the language pack entirely. Therefore, the second method, which involves modifying vmwarebase.dll to load the language pack, is detailed below.
Load vmware.exe using the x64dbg tool. 
Navigate to the Symbols tab, select vmwarebase.dll in the left pane, search for Locale_GetUserLanguage in the right pane, and jump to the function’s address. 
Scroll down to locate the language codes such as 'ja', 'fr', 'es', etc.
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cmp eax,11
jne vmwarebase.7FFACDC33C69
lea rcx,qword ptr ds: [7FFACDEB65FC] ; rcx:ZwQueryInformationThread+14, 00007FFACDEB65FC:"ja"
Set a breakpoint at the cmp eax,11 instruction. 
Execute the application until it reaches this breakpoint. 
Double-click on ds: [7FFACDEB65FC] and locate the corresponding language code (e.g., zh_CN) within the dump section below. 
Copy this memory address. 
Amend the assembly instruction at lea rcx so that the ds pointer references this newly copied address. 
Observe the registers on the right-hand side at the breakpoint (under ‘Hide FPU’). Noting that the value of eax is 4, modify the instruction from cmp eax,11 to cmp eax,4. 
This concludes the patching process. 
Afterword
This solution was originally published on 18 October 2025 on the Kafan Forum and the Landian readers’ group, providing Chinese localisation for version 25H1. During this process, assistance was provided by cuiplay alongside other contributors.
Following the acquisition of VMware by Broadcom, numerous original resources have become increasingly difficult to locate, and the maintenance of several features has ceased. In addition to this article, a repository containing backups and research related to VMware Tools is available at https://github.com/YorkWaugh/vmware_tools_backup.