The VideoLAN Forums

I just installed VLC 0.8.6 (with the installer).

When I start it, the GUI is not in english.

(in the installer I choose the english language, when asked; which is weird because I already have choosen a system wide language preference, why can't the programs simply respect that ?)

The installer was an add on and language selection is just for the installer. VLC picks up the system installed language.

--------------------------------------

VLC uses the fonts installed on your system for your language! The default is the installed language.

This can be changed in Preferences, Interface from the pull down select your language. But you may not be able to see this.

So open a DOS box and type: CD "C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC" Then type: vlc --language en for English or fr for French

Syntax: --language {auto,en,en_GB,ca,da,de,es,fr,it,ja,ka,ko,nl,oc,pt_BR,ro,ru,tr,
zh_CN,zh_TW}

When VLC opens check to be sure you can read the menus and then open Preferences and press "Save" then close the player.

If you are still having problems with your preferred language you will need to install or reinstall that language within Windows so that it will fill in the missing or broken fonts in your system.

Can you just copy the program line that guesses the language ?

The default is the installed language for your system. There is no guessing involved.

Define "installed language" ?
It is english windows, with language set to "english".

Installed language = Whatever language your operating system was set up to be.