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The language for some menu items (mostly in Preferences settings/dialogs) are following the system regional setting, instead of the VLC own language setting, when the VLC own language setting is set to something different than "Auto".

For example, my system's regional setting is set to Romanian. Assuming I set the VLC interface language preferences to US English, some menu items in Preferences remains still in Romanian (for example all checkboxes from Preferences -> Audio -> Filters).
It happens both in version 0.8.6x and in 0.9.0.
It happens even after a system restart (thus flushing all caches, I suppose).
This issue only solves if I either delete the Romanian language file, or if I switch the system locale to US English (or generally speaking, if the VLC language setting matches the system locale setting).

Why ?

Cristi

The language for some menu items (mostly in Preferences settings/dialogs) are following the system regional setting, instead of the VLC own language setting, when the VLC own language setting is set to something different than "Auto".

For example, my system's regional setting is set to Romanian. Assuming I set the VLC interface language preferences to US English, some menu items in Preferences remains still in Romanian (for example all checkboxes from Preferences -> Audio -> Filters).
It happens both in version 0.8.6x and in 0.9.0.
It happens even after a system restart (thus flushing all caches, I suppose).
This issue only solves if I either delete the Romanian language file, or if I switch the system locale to US English (or generally speaking, if the VLC language setting matches the system locale setting).

Why ?

Cristi

I deleted the ro folder myself also... What I don't know is who is the idioat who "translated" VLC in romanian... and why he changed te GUI to do that... he could only leave it in Englis and translate how much ce could. And for VLC team the idea of installing it by default according to regional settings is the most stupid idea i have ever eard. Like it was a hard thing to do to add an extra step in instalation latting you to chose the using language...?!

I deleted the ro folder myself also... What I don't know is who is the idioat who "translated" VLC in romanian... and why he changed te GUI to do that... he could only leave it in Englis and translate how much ce could.

He, he, I am that idiot who translated VLC in Romanian for the last period of time ... the sumary and latest update on this can be found here.

As for the VLC team idea of installing it by default according to regional settings, this is a common usage among GTK+ based applications. In fact, VLC has done a better job: it offers a preference selection for this, whereas most other GTK+ applications does not, unfortunately.

Like it was a hard thing to do to add an extra step in instalation latting you to chose the using language...?!

Don't know about this, maybe other users around the globe are just happy the way it is, by always using their native language ?

Still, the problem of this topic remains: if the user wants a particular language (say English), then let the user have that particular language, not a mix of [part of the desired language] and [part of locale dependent language].

Cristi

He, he, I am that idiot who translated VLC in Romanian for the last period of time ... the sumary and latest update on this can be found here.
Cristi

I was not referring to the fact that is not well translated at all. If it's in Romanian or in English, for me is the same thing... The thing that bothered me is that in Romanian version I can't see all the menus and also lots of forms and buttons are missing and I only see empty labels and action buttons... and you can't work with that kind of software. Probably you know now why I am frustrated. I don't know if it's your fault or others but I studied computers in faculty and I can't see how is possible for some menus to dissapear when you translate a soft...

I apologise if I offended you in any way.

And one more thing... I read the link you mentioned and i can't see so many things as in your "d" version picture. In my "d" version even less things can be seen...

And also I noticed another thing... not even shortcuts don't work. I tryed to use Preferences' shortcut Ctrl-S which is not working either which works in EN version.

And I apologise again for my anger in the first post... In the first place I thaught that the one who translated VLC is the one who is responsable for the GUI problem... It is a nobil thing you do, probably most of others would do this for money in an office somewhere working for a company...

No problem at all, I understand your frustration ... Hopefully a post like yours and others will make better understand to the VLC team that this is a critical bug, even if it's not security related.
Until then (then = ?) your only chance is to follow the suggestion I mentioned here.

Cristi

No problem at all, I understand your frustration ... Hopefully a post like yours and others will make better understand to the VLC team that this is a critical bug, even if it's not security related.
Until then (then = ?) your only chance is to follow the suggestion I mentioned here.

Cristi

Ok! Thanks a lot... good luck and happy new year!

This will be fixed during the first week of january.

To go back to the original post by secarica:

There are q few dialogs like open file or open directory or save file which are taken directly from the gui libraries ( wxWidgets in 0.8.6 and QT in 0.9.0) and if those dialogs can either not have been localized or not use the language setting of VLC.

But as you say it's in preferences it is quite strange and i don't have any idea of why at the moment.

For 0.9.0, do you see that with the wx or the qt interface ? for qt, in the simple or advanced interfaces ?

--
Xtophe

There are q few dialogs like open file or open directory or save file which are taken directly from the gui libraries ( wxWidgets in 0.8.6 and QT in 0.9.0) and if those dialogs can either not have been localized or not use the language setting of VLC.

I am expecting that the VLC language setting to establish all language strings to the desired one.

But as you say it's in preferences it is quite strange and i don't have any idea of why at the moment.
For 0.9.0, do you see that with the wx or the qt interface ? for qt, in the simple or advanced interfaces ?

See the snapshot below (the snapshot was taken after setting the interface language selection to EN US -> Save -> close VLC -> then open VLC again). This is from version vlc-0.9.0-svn-20071209-0000. Version vlc-0.9.0-svn-20071220-0000-win32 as well as version vlc-0.9.0-svn-20080102-0000-win32 appears to have a bug: some preferences (including the interface language selection) cannot be saved. Don't know about other inbetween versions.
I can also provide a snapshot for version 0.8.6x if that helps on something.



Cristi

I am also having the same problem but the drop down menus, preferences etc are a mix of Japanese and English. Am using Mac OS X 10.4 with the main language set to English, the secondary language is Japanese. I opened up the VLC preferences and changed the language over from Japanese to English. Also opened up the vlcrc in ~Library>Prefs>VLC and found the code to be a mix of English letters and 'Greek'. Anyway, just to let you know.

ok gang i figured it out how to get your language to work throughout VLC - this worked for me and hopefully will work for you - im going to assume that you've already changed the preference in VLC - VLC>preferences>Interface - to the language of your choice but are still seeing some of that foreign language in some menu items and sporadically throughout VLC - Heres what you should try - close VLC - go to your SYSTEM PREFERENCES on your Mac - Sys Prefs>International>Language - where it shows the languages sort them in the order that the top 1 or 2 are the main languages you want, simply by dragging them up or down - youll see the mouse arrow turn to a hand. In my case i wanted all English so my top 2 languages are US English, English and then some foreign languages i need for other things - when you restart VLC all your items in the app should be your language - in my case all English - good luck - lemme know how it goes and if this solves the problem. g

i dont know how this would work on Windows but i suspect the principal is the same.

First of all, in Windows XP there are four settings for language or region preferences. One is for cultural customization (clock and date format, measurement, currency, etc.), one appears to be for content providers (internet shopping pages I suppose), one is for encoding of non-Unicode programs, and one is for interface language setting that practically only Microsoft MUI enabled components use it (Windows and Office interface for languages where MUI exists).
The VLC language mess depends on the first of setting (cultural).

But it is a stupid thing to have to change the regional cultural setting at OS level just to select a interface language for some application, only because that program is badly programmed. This stupidity applies to many GTK+ based applications. For example I always want to stay with Romanian locales, like 24 hour format for the clock, or A4 page size, or the comma as decimal separator. Because of that, if I want English language on Sylpheed or Pidgin interfaces, I have to delete the physical Romanian translation file on each of these programs.

Generally speaking, if on same machine one user wants language A and other user wants language B while keepeng the clock format to cultural region belonging to language C, usual GTK+ applications remain locked to language C. VLC goes a bit further, in theory: it provides a per-user settting for the language selection, so each user can either let VLC follow the language of the clock or decimal separator format selection (VLC's "Auto" selection), or specify a particular language.
Brilliant, only that it does not work as intended.

Cristi

I am not so happy to report that this issue is still not resolved. I cannot change interface language through preferences, at all.

I just had to delete the (supposed) Croatian translation file from /usr/share/locale/hr/LC_MESSAGES/vlc.mo on my Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS.

VLC version :
VLC media player 1.0.6 Goldeneye
VLC version 1.0.6 Goldeneye
Compiled by buildd@rothera.buildd
Compiler: gcc version 4.4.3 (Ubuntu 4.4.3-4ubuntu5)

For me, there is NO option under Interface tab in preferences.

After I delete the forementioned file, interface language is changed to English.

Preferences screenshots:



Viktor

Of course, LANG=C vlc is the way to go on Linux... This is completly normal.