Accidental change of system language?

[Patty Winter]

I just got home from a party and found a panicked message from
a cousin asking for help with her family's iMac, which is suddenly
displaying everything in "some Asian language." I'll call her in
the morning and try to get more information, but is there any way
they could have accidentally changed the system language? I.e.,
something easier than opening the International system preferences?
Some strange combination of keystrokes, perhaps? (I once had a cat
turn on Sticky Keys, so I know there are some esoteric keyboard
shortcuts on a Mac...)


Patty

[Claude V. Lucas]

In article <4ebe11f8$0$1654$742e...@news.sonic.net>,

My iMac started speaking to me and was describing every mouse
move last week after one of the cats danced on the keyboard
overnight. Freaked me right out first thing in the morning.
Took a bit to kill it off. I didn't even know such a thing
was included in OS X...

Might be able to boot in English on another disk and remove whatever
preference file controls the language from the unintelligible one.

Somebody else will have to tell you exactly which file...

A quick Google for "OS X system language" returns this gem

Typing:

<defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleLanguages "(en, ja, fr, de, es, it, nl, sv, nb, da, fi, pt, zh-Hans, zh-Hant, ko)>

without the angle brackets ( might need sudo )
into a terminal window will supposedly move "en" to the top of
the language list. I'd guess that one would not need the rest of
the languages but without experimenting I can't be certain.

This also might be deprecated or not included in your problem
version of OS X, but good luck.

[Tom Stiller]

In article <4ebe6fd3$0$1692$742e...@news.sonic.net>,

OTH System Preferences->Language & Text might be easier.

--
PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf
of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy. -- Ambrose Bierce

[Claude V. Lucas]

In article <tom_stiller-9CB1...@news.individual.net>,

Yeah, if you can read it...

[Patty Winter]

In article <4ebe6fd3$0$1692$742e...@news.sonic.net>,

Claude V. Lucas <cla...@sonic.net> wrote:
>
>Typing:
>
><defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleLanguages "(en, ja, fr, de, es, it,
>nl, sv, nb, da, fi, pt, zh-Hans, zh-Hant, ko)>
>
>without the angle brackets ( might need sudo )
>into a terminal window will supposedly move "en" to the top of
>the language list.

These folks aren't familiar with Terminal, so it would only
scare them to use it. And I definitely wouldn't turn them
loose with a sudo command! :-)


Patty

[Tom Stiller]

In article <4ebe9650$0$1674$742e...@news.sonic.net>,

If you can't guess,try them one at a time until you get it right.

[Alan Browne]

On 2011-11-12 01:28 , Patty Winter wrote:
> I just got home from a party and found a panicked message from
> a cousin asking for help with her family's iMac, which is suddenly
> displaying everything in "some Asian language."

Go into system settings from the "Apple logo" (top left). System
settings is the 4th item in that dropdown list. Language and text is
the blue "UN" flag.

From there, the TOP LEFT most button is "Language". Click that and
then hit the button at the BOTTOM LEFT. That is the "edit list" button.
Clear all the flags for the languages they don't want and set the one
they want.

That should do it.


--
gmail originated posts filtered due to spam.

[Alan Browne]

On 2011-11-12 13:02 , Tom Stiller wrote:
> In article<4ebe9650$0$1674$742e...@news.sonic.net>,
> cla...@sonic.net (Claude V. Lucas) wrote:
>
>> In article<tom_stiller-9CB1...@news.individual.net>,
>> Tom Stiller<tom_s...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>>> OTH System Preferences->Language& Text might be easier.

>>>
>>
>> Yeah, if you can read it...
>
> If you can't guess,try them one at a time until you get it right.

I posted a "recipe" on how to get to it. Less random.

[Patty Winter]

In article <WPCdnVwOoIhpKSPT...@giganews.com>,

Alan Browne <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
>On 2011-11-12 01:28 , Patty Winter wrote:
>> I just got home from a party and found a panicked message from
>> a cousin asking for help with her family's iMac, which is suddenly
>> displaying everything in "some Asian language."
>
>Go into system settings from the "Apple logo" (top left). System
>settings is the 4th item in that dropdown list. Language and text is
>the blue "UN" flag.

Thanks, but I know how to get her *out* of the problem. As I mentioned,
my question was how she got *into* it in the first place. Does anyone
know of a way to change the system language other than going through
System Preferences? (Or a Terminal command, which I know they didn't do.)

I just talked with her and her husband fixed it. She said that the
System Preferences were still in English. Even weirder, she said
that Safari and iPhoto were in Chinese, but Firefox was in English.
I have no idea what could affect a couple of applications but not
others and not the entire system.


Patty

[Wes Groleau]

On 11-12-2011 13:54, Patty Winter wrote:
> I just talked with her and her husband fixed it. She said that the
> System Preferences were still in English. Even weirder, she said
> that Safari and iPhoto were in Chinese, but Firefox was in English.
> I have no idea what could affect a couple of applications but not
> others and not the entire system.

The Siamese cats did it. They didn't realize that Siamese
is now called Thai, so they picked Chinese as sencd best.

--
Wes Groleau

Be spontaneous … today
http://Ideas.Lang-Learn.us/BlindDog?itemid=3984

[David Empson]

Patty Winter <pat...@wintertime.com> wrote:

> In article <WPCdnVwOoIhpKSPT...@giganews.com>,
> Alan Browne <alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
> >On 2011-11-12 01:28 , Patty Winter wrote:
> >> I just got home from a party and found a panicked message from
> >> a cousin asking for help with her family's iMac, which is suddenly
> >> displaying everything in "some Asian language."
> >
> >Go into system settings from the "Apple logo" (top left). System
> >settings is the 4th item in that dropdown list. Language and text is
> >the blue "UN" flag.
>
> Thanks, but I know how to get her *out* of the problem. As I mentioned,
> my question was how she got *into* it in the first place. Does anyone
> know of a way to change the system language other than going through
> System Preferences? (Or a Terminal command, which I know they didn't do.)

Perhaps something else they ran invoked the "defaults" command line
tool, which modified the system preference language setting. Seems a
rather dubious thing to do. I'd be more inclined to suspect that the
appropriate preference file got corrupted.

> I just talked with her and her husband fixed it. She said that the
> System Preferences were still in English. Even weirder, she said
> that Safari and iPhoto were in Chinese, but Firefox was in English.
> I have no idea what could affect a couple of applications but not
> others and not the entire system.

That part is easy to explain: the list of languages in System Preference
shows the prioirty order for selecting a language. Each application will
use the language highest up the list for which the application has been
localised. Each application may be localised in a different subset of
the possible languages.

An installation of Firefox doesn't supported multiple langauges - it is
distributed in separate single language versions, so an English version
of Firefox can only operate in English, no matter what was on the list
in System Preferences.

Safari and iPhoto had a localisation in whichever language was
configured as the first system language (or the first supported one
higher in the list than English).

On my Snow Leopard system (10.6.8), assuming I have the country codes
right, it looks like System Preferences and Safari (5.1.1) are localised
for Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese,
Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (generic), Portuguese from
Portugal, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, mainland Chinese and Taiwanese.

iPhoto '11 is localised for the same languages plus Serbo-Croat,
Hungarian and Turkish.

Without knowing more about the version of the system I can't explain why
Safari and System Preferences behaved differently, but if they were
running a system older than mine it is possible that their Safari and
iPhoto supported a language which System Preferences didn't, so System
Preferences used the next supported language on the list, which was
English.

--
David Empson
dem...@actrix.gen.nz

[Paul Sture]

If you have difficulty doing this with the foreign language, the trick is
to use the icons.

I have a web page describing this with screen shots you can use to see
the process:

<http://www.sture.ch/node/113>

--
Paul Sture

"The trouble with quotes on the internet is that it's difficult to
determine whether or not they are genuine." -- Abraham Lincoln

[Paul Sture]

On Sat, 12 Nov 2011 18:54:02 +0000, Patty Winter wrote:

> I just talked with her and her husband fixed it. She said that the
> System Preferences were still in English. Even weirder, she said that
> Safari and iPhoto were in Chinese, but Firefox was in English. I have no
> idea what could affect a couple of applications but not others and not
> the entire system.

I assume that Firefox was the English only version. Indeed looking at the
Firefox download page, it appears they are way behind Apple in
multilingual stakes and you have to download a separate version for each
language (sigh).

<http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all.html>

[Patty Winter]

In article <j9mk03$p3c$2...@dont-email.me>,

Wes Groleau <Grolea...@FreeShell.org> wrote:
>
>The Siamese cats did it. They didn't realize that Siamese
>is now called Thai, so they picked Chinese as sencd best.

:-)

I'll advise my cousin to keep pets away from the computer...


Patty

[Patty Winter]

In article <1kaoerv.13ra3dt1daqqwlN%dem...@actrix.gen.nz>,
David Empson <dem...@actrix.gen.nz> wrote:

>Patty Winter <pat...@wintertime.com> wrote:
>
>> I just talked with her and her husband fixed it. She said that the
>> System Preferences were still in English. Even weirder, she said
>> that Safari and iPhoto were in Chinese, but Firefox was in English.
>

>That part is easy to explain: the list of languages in System Preference
>shows the prioirty order for selecting a language. Each application will
>use the language highest up the list for which the application has been
>localised. Each application may be localised in a different subset of
>the possible languages.
>
>An installation of Firefox doesn't supported multiple langauges - it is
>distributed in separate single language versions, so an English version
>of Firefox can only operate in English, no matter what was on the list
>in System Preferences.
>
>Safari and iPhoto had a localisation in whichever language was
>configured as the first system language (or the first supported one
>higher in the list than English).

I noticed in my System Preferences yesterday (I'm also running 10.6)
that the one right after English is Chinese. So I can see how the
Apple apps could have defaulted to Chinese if something went wrong
with their instructions to use English first. And your information
about Firefox explains why it stayed in English. That leaves the
question of why the overall system punted from the top choice (English)
to the second choice (Chinese), but at least what happened is starting
to make a bit of sense.


Patty