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opensas
Asked: 2020-04-20 14:30:04 +0800 CST

set system-language to english: apt showing messages in spanish

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I installed ubuntu, using english as a language.

Then I added spanish, meant to be used by another user.

Now whenever I do something in apt the messages are in spanish

This is the content of my locale file:

$ cat /etc/default/locale 
#  File generated by update-locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC="es_AR.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="es_AR.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="es_AR.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="es_AR.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="es_AR.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="es_AR.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="es_AR.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="es_AR.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="es_AR.UTF-8"

I also tried running

sudo apt-get install language-pack-en language-pack-en-base manpages

and also

sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

in which I chose en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 and es_AR.UTF-8 UTF-8 (I don't want to mess the configuration of the spanish speaking user)

As default language for the entire system I choose: en_US.UTF-8 Also tried with:

$ sudo update-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8

$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_US:es
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=es_AR.UTF-8
LC_TIME=es_AR.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=es_AR.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=es_AR.UTF-8
LC_NAME=es_AR.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=es_AR.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=es_AR.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=es_AR.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=es_AR.UTF-8
LC_ALL=

Abd then I tried adding export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 to my bashrc, but nothing seems to work.

Related questions:

apt locale system-language

1 Answers

  1. I think I found the reason.

    LANGUAGE=en_US:es

    You must have set that manually; the UI would not allow you to. The thing is that the en_US translation files typically do not include translations, since the original strings are supposed to be American English. So gettext looks first for a translation in en_US, does not find any, and then go looking for a Spanish translation.

    You should change it to:

    LANGUAGE=en_US:en
    • 2