How to change the language of your Debian system

* First, you have to set EnvironmentVariables such as LANG, LANGUAGE, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES to your local language. Usually LANG (or LC_ALL) is sufficient. (shamelessly stolen from Claws Mail doc ;) Check what you have at present with:

# env | grep LANG

* Second, you may also need to reconfigure your locales.

To do this, as root:

First: issue on a root terminal #export LANG=(the two letter code for your country).UTF-8 That is, for the Spanish language it would be:

# export LANG=es_ES.UTF-8

Second: reconfigure locales issuing the following command:

# dpkg-reconfigure locales

A window will ask you to select the languages (you select with SPACE) you want to have available. Choose your own.

Changes may not show immediately, a reboot will be needed.

(Please feel free to modify these instructions if you know better. Thanks.)


How to change the language of KDE applications

Show available languages:( DebSearch:kde-l10n )

  apt-cache search kde-l10n 

Change the language:

  apt-get install kde-l10n-thetwoletter (of your country)

as an example (for german 'de'utschland) :

  apt-get install kde-l10n-de 

Now you have your language in all KDE applications!