How does one change the language of the command line interface of Git?

Asked 17/5, 2012 at 10:3 Answered 12/6, 2019 at 2:51

Solved bash git localization environment-variables locale

147

I’d like to change the language of git (to English) in my Linux installation without changing the language for other programs and couldn’t find the settings. How to do it?

Ladd answered 17/5, 2012 at 10:3 Comment(1)

You're looking to change locale. I'd repost that question on superuser I think. – Loupe 17/5, 2012 at 10:27

224

Add these lines to your ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile or ~/.zprofile to force git to display all messages in English:

# Set Git language to English
#alias git='LANG=en_US git'
alias git='LANG=en_GB git'

The alias needs to override LC_ALL on some systems, when the environment variable LC_ALL is set, which has precedence over LANG. See the UNIX Specification - Environment Variables for further explanation.

# Set Git language to English
#alias git='LC_ALL=en_US git'
alias git='LC_ALL=en_GB git'

In case you added these lines to ~/.bashrc the alias will be defined when a new interactive shell gets started. In case you added it to ~/.bash_profile the alias will be applied when logging in.

Arst answered 3/6, 2012 at 16:56 Comment(13)

There was a typo in the file name (.bash.rc instead of .bashrc). You also have to close and start the shell again for the .bashrc to be executed. I added an note on this, as well. – Arst 4/6, 2012 at 20:33

I tried it in my .bashrc even with restarting. Aliases work. It´s just the language doesn´t change. – Ladd 9/6, 2012 at 15:33

To verify that the .bashrc gets executed successfully you could add an test like echo "This is .bashrc"to the end of the file. You can also get have it executed on demand without having to restart the terminal or the whole system by . .bashrc. Finally, I would suggest trying to set the LC_ALL environment variable instead of LANG, since the first one has precedence. – Arst 10/6, 2012 at 16:16

Everything is fine with my .bashrc, really. If LC_ALL has precedence then this will be the problem, it is set to my language. But then I don´t want to change the general language setting... Can´t I overwrite it for one program? – Ladd 10/6, 2012 at 17:40

You can set the language using the suggested method without side effects, since these variables only life as long as the command takes to terminate. Try it by running $ LC_ALL="en_US" man and then $ man – Arst 10/6, 2012 at 23:58

Ok, alias git='LC_ALL="en_US" git' works! Would you please extend your answer to include both cases with explanation? – Ladd 14/6, 2012 at 10:16

Glad I could finally help you, I extended my answer accordingly. I guess I have just owned my first acceptance, am I right? – Arst 14/6, 2012 at 23:46

Yes. But the problem lines in my .bashrc were export LANG="<lang>.UTF-8" and export LC_ALL="<lang>.UTF-8". So the corresponding one should be overwritten, LANG when only LANG is set and LC_ALL when LC_ALL or others are set if I am right. – Ladd 15/6, 2012 at 14:13

Git started to speak French after upgrading to Ubuntu 13.10. Setting LANG solved the issue, LC_ALL was unset. – Armor 4/11, 2013 at 8:59

which directory do you find these files? – Fulbert 27/11, 2014 at 14:12

@OliverWatkins .bashrc and .bash_profile are located in the home directory. When you open a terminal, you usually are there already. Alternatively, you can do a cd ~ or cd $HOME to get there. I have edited my answer to include ~/ prefixes. – Arst 27/11, 2014 at 15:16

In case you are using Z shell (zsh) you need to set your language environment to your ~/.zshrc – Extortionate 28/10, 2019 at 15:35

@Extortionate The question is about only changing the language of only git. If zsh can do that, that should be an answer, not a comment. – Arst 28/10, 2019 at 19:31

If you just want to have one command in english instead you can just write LC_ALL=C before the command, for example:

LC_ALL=C git status

will result in

# On branch master
nothing to commit, working directory clean

The locale as used in C is English and always available without installing additional language packs
(see https://askubuntu.com/a/142814/34298)

To change it for the whole current bash session just enter

LANG=C

To change it for example to german enter

LANG=de_DE.UTF-8

Crosswalk answered 17/4, 2014 at 19:20 Comment(1)

Thanks for the LC_ALL=C suggestion, as I have some problems with locale, LC_ALL="en_US" didn´t work anymore recently. – Ladd 27/4, 2014 at 16:20

Adding this line solved the problem for me: Update: it seems like more components require a Locale as well now.

$ more ~/.bash_profile

export LANG=en_US (obsolete)

export LANG="en_US.UTF-8" (Updated)

Elimination answered 7/11, 2018 at 22:40 Comment(2)

The question is how to change the language for git only - I updated it to be more clear. – Ladd 18/1, 2019 at 10:3

Missing the encoding, it messed up my environment so bad 😭 – Bluing 9/3, 2021 at 16:30

Note: since Git 2.3.1+ (Q1/Q2 2015), Git will add Accept-Language header if possible.
See commit f18604b by Yi EungJun (eungjun-yi)

Add an Accept-Language header which indicates the user's preferred languages defined by $LANGUAGE, $LC_ALL, $LC_MESSAGES and $LANG.

This gives git servers a chance to display remote error messages in the user's preferred language.

You have locale for git gui or other GUIs, ~~but not for the command-line, considering it was one of the questions of GitSurvey 2010~~

localization of command-line messages (i18n)    258     3.6%

Of course, since 2010, as po/README describes:

Before strings can be translated they first have to be marked for translation.

Git uses an internationalization interface that wraps the system's gettext library, so most of the advice in your gettext documentation (on GNU systems info gettext in a terminal) applies.

In place since git 1.7.9+ (January 2012):

Git uses gettext to translate its most common interface messages into the user's language if translations are available and the locale is appropriately set.
Distributors can drop new PO files in po/ to add new translations.

So, if your update has mess up the translation, check what gettext uses:
See, for instance, "Locale Environment Variables"

A locale is composed of several locale categories, see Aspects. When a program looks up locale dependent values, it does this according to the following environment variables, in priority order:
LANGUAGE
LC_ALL
LC_xxx, according to selected locale category: LC_CTYPE, LC_NUMERIC, LC_TIME, LC_COLLATE, LC_MONETARY, LC_MESSAGES, ...
LANG 
Variables whose value is set but is empty are ignored in this lookup.

LANG is the normal environment variable for specifying a locale. As a user, you normally set this variable (unless some of the other variables have already been set by the system, in /etc/profile or similar initialization files).

LC_CTYPE, LC_NUMERIC, LC_TIME, LC_COLLATE, LC_MONETARY, LC_MESSAGES, and so on, are the environment variables meant to override LANG and affecting a single locale category only.
For example, assume you are a Swedish user in Spain, and you want your programs to handle numbers and dates according to Spanish conventions, and only the messages should be in Swedish. Then you could create a locale named ‘sv_ES’ or ‘sv_ES.UTF-8’ by use of the localedef program. But it is simpler, and achieves the same effect, to set the LANG variable to es_ES.UTF-8 and the LC_MESSAGES variable to sv_SE.UTF-8; these two locales come already preinstalled with the operating system.

LC_ALL is an environment variable that overrides all of these. It is typically used in scripts that run particular programs. For example, configure scripts generated by GNU autoconf use LC_ALL to make sure that the configuration tests don't operate in locale dependent ways.

Some systems, unfortunately, set LC_ALL in /etc/profile or in similar initialization files. As a user, you therefore have to unset this variable if you want to set LANG and optionally some of the other LC_xxx variables.

Earlier, HTTP transport clients learned to tell the server side what locale they are in by sending Accept-Language HTTP header, but this was done only for some requests but not others.
This is fixed with Git 2.38 (Q3 2022):

See commit b0c4adc (11 Jul 2022) by Li Linchao (Cactusinhand).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 4b8cdff, 19 Jul 2022)}

remote-curl: send Accept-Language header to server

^{Helped-by: Junio C Hamano}
^{Signed-off-by: Li Linchao}

Git server end's ability to accept Accept-Language header was introduced in f18604b ("http: add Accept-Language header if possible", 2015-01-28, Git v2.4.0-rc0 -- merge), but this is only used by very early phase of the transfer, which is HTTP GET request to discover references.
For other phases, like POST request in the smart HTTP, the server does not know what language the client speaks.

Teach git client to learn end-users preferred language and throw accept-language header to the server side.
Once the server gets this header, it has the ability to talk to end-user with language they understand.
This would be very helpful for many non-English speakers.

Infinitude answered 17/5, 2012 at 11:51 Comment(4)

So where does the transalation come from? The reason why I asked is that I had git in english before and after an update it changed to my language, but I don´t like this. – Ladd 19/5, 2012 at 16:1

@Ladd sorry, my mistake. Git supports locale, with gettext. So check out your environment variables. I detail which one to check in my edited answer. – Infinitude 19/5, 2012 at 16:29

What if I want to just change the language for git but not for other programs? I.e. for me translations break some things so I would like to have git always (no matter which program calls it) have LANG=C and everything else in my native language. Any ideas? – Tyratyrannical 29/5, 2012 at 12:9

@Tyratyrannical As long as you set LANG in the bash/shell/DOS session you are using git in (or launching git-gui from), only git (or git-gui) will be using that specific setting. All the other programs will inherit from the system / user environment variables. – Infinitude 29/5, 2012 at 13:17

Run LC_MESSAGES=C git, not LC_ALL=C or LANG=C and no need delete or rename files.

This command change output Git messages to english.

Assets answered 2/10, 2018 at 16:21 Comment(0)

As Bengt suggested : Add these lines to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile to force git to display all messages in English: vim ~/.bashrc - for this profile (if you are user ubuntu and you edit this it will be only for this user); add this lines:

# Set Git language to English
#alias git='LANG=en_US git'
alias git='LANG=en_GB git'
#you can add also 
LANG=en_GB

and after you close the file you need to write in shell:

source ~/.bashrc

to reload new settings or exit the terminal and connect again :)

Halley answered 21/5, 2019 at 16:10 Comment(1)

What is the additional LANG=en_GB in ~/.bashrc supposed to do? Doesn't that just define the local variable LANG? – Ladd 30/5, 2019 at 10:56

GIT defaults to english if it cannot find the Locale language.

So if you want GIT to be in english, just sabotage the language file that it is running with. In my case it was always running with german (ie: de.msg).

If I deleted it or renamed the it, then it defaulted to english.

enter image description here

Here I renamed the file

enter image description here

Fulbert answered 27/11, 2014 at 14:18 Comment(4)

With Git for Windows 2.x (64 bit) this will be in C:\Program Files\Git\mingw64\share\locale\$LANG\LC_MESSAGES\git.mo. – Beedon 28/5, 2015 at 8:25

The advantage of this approach might be that after an update of git, the translation will be back (and maybe improved), so you can decide again whether you want to use it or remove it again. – Ladd 18/1, 2019 at 10:1

I've checked the source code, it seems that git does not support English: github.com/git-l10n/git-po/tree/master/po Even I want to use English first before Chinese and Swedish (en_GB:en:zh_HK:zh_CN:zh:sv_SE:sv), git still shows Chinese to me. – Selfdevotion 7/3, 2019 at 8:17

On Mac OSx with Git installed via Homebrew, I found the locales in /usr/local/Cellar/git/2.21.0/share/locale/. – Infertile 2/7, 2019 at 19:21

Here is my solution to change git language follow answer this and this

1) nano ~/.bashrc
2) add alias git='LANG=en_GB git' to the file
2) save the file
4) source ~/.bashrc

Now your git already change the language. However, IF after your restart terminal and it not working anymore, you need to

4.1) nano ~/.profile
4.2) add source ~/.bashrc
4.3) save the file

it will make source ~/.bashrc run whenever you open the terminal

Hope it help

Voltaic answered 12/6, 2019 at 2:51 Comment(0)

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