How to switch language de - en

On my computer EOS (Gnome) runs in German (de). Is it possible to switch quickly between German and English (en)? For example to generate generally understandable outputs here in the forum? Thanks a lot!

parameter then country and language

man date # deutsch
LANG=C man date # english
1 Like

What about …

$ locale
LANG=en

The question was

quickly.

and not locale

locale                                                                                                                                    
LANG=de_DE.utf8
LC_CTYPE="de_DE.utf8"
LC_NUMERIC="de_DE.utf8"
LC_TIME="de_DE.utf8"
LC_COLLATE="de_DE.utf8"
LC_MONETARY="de_DE.utf8"
LC_MESSAGES="de_DE.utf8"
LC_PAPER="de_DE.utf8"
LC_NAME="de_DE.utf8"
LC_ADDRESS="de_DE.utf8"
LC_TELEPHONE="de_DE.utf8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="de_DE.utf8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="de_DE.utf8"
LC_ALL=

Wenn es permanent geändert werden soll dann mal

lesen.

Thanks for your advice. But no, I don’t really want to change it permanently. Thanks for your advice. But no, I don’t really want to change it permanently. I am an absolute Linux beginner and therefore I want to know what I am doing to learn something from it.

If some output in terminal is german then put

LANG=C

in front and the output change, quickly :wink: , to english.
Sample

man date # deutsch
LANG=C man date # english
DATE(1)                                                       Dienstprogramme fĂĽr Benutzer                                                       DATE(1)

BEZEICHNUNG
       date - Ausgeben oder Setzen von Systemdatum und -zeit

ĂśBERSICHT
       date [OPTION]… [+FORMAT]
       date [-u|--utc|--universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]

BESCHREIBUNG
       Die aktuelle Uhrzeit im angegebenen FORMAT anzeigen oder die Systemzeit setzen.

       Die obligatorischen Argumente fĂĽr Optionen sind fĂĽr deren Kurz- und Langform gleich.

       -d, --date=ZEICHENKETTE
              Die in ZEICHENKETTE beschriebene Zeit anzeigen, nicht »jetzt«
DATE(1)                                                               User Commands                                                              DATE(1)

NAME
       date - print or set the system date and time

SYNOPSIS
       date [OPTION]... [+FORMAT]
       date [-u|--utc|--universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]

DESCRIPTION
       Display the current time in the given FORMAT, or set the system date.

       Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

       -d, --date=STRING
              display time described by STRING, not 'now'
1 Like

Great! I haven’t tried it yet, but that’s exactly what I was looking for.

I know :wink:

Now you can mark post #3 or #8 as solution :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Summary (@SGS has helped me a lot):

I have to log into the terminal as superuser (su) first and then enter the password hidden (as usual under Linux). Then I enter LANG=C (“C” probably stands for “Common”). Then I start my job in the terminal, for example “pacman -Syu”.

All pacman traffic is then handled in English. I can communicate this very well for our mostly english speaking users. At the end you must not forget to log off as superuser with the command “exit”.

Afterwards @SGS suggested a simplification to me which works well: It also works everything in one line:

LANG=C sudo pacman -Syu

Then the respective command, in this case pacman, starts immediately with the instruction to attach appropriate notes in English. You can communicate these hints here, where most people are English speaking or understand English.

This might also be interesting for other people who write in German, Dutch, Spanish, Russian or other languages.

1 Like

Not afterwards :wink: , in short words, I give the answer in post # 3, but it was to short for new :slight_smile: terminal users.

1 Like

One small thing to help you with that a bit more.
You might want to write that command as a bash alias:

    alias update='LANG=C sudo pacman -Syu'

and copy the above line into the end of file ~/.bashrc.

Then start a new terminal (and close possible “old” terminal windows).

Then, to update your system in English, just command:

    update
1 Like