Software in your Language
Mac Tip #257/23-August-2006

Choose languages in the International System Preferences pane.

The whole matter of languages and your Mac involves several layers. As we work our way towards making the most of spellchecks it’s useful to see how we can work with languages.

In the last Tip I showed how to set your preferred languages. In the first screenshot you can see that I’ve set my computer to prefer this sequence for menus and dialog boxes:

• Australian English
• British English
• English
• Maori
• Deutsch (German)

See what languages Safari has available.

Some of the software on your computer supports more than one language. To see and control which languages are used select the application icon in the Finder and choose Get Info from the File menu. If necessary, click the disclosure triangle for the Languages section of the Get Info window.

All the languages supported by the application are listed in the Languages section, with a checkbox beside every Language that is active. In my screenshot you can see that I’ve temporarily deactivated English for Safari.

Safari has menus in German.

Now when I start up Safari it compares my list of preferences in the International System Preferences Pane to its own list of available languages. Because I unchecked English as a possibility for Safari, the first successful match that it finds is German, as you can see in my third screenshot, which shows Safari’s menus in German.

Not all software has the necessary language resources, but you can easily check which ones support the languages you’re interested in by Getting Info as described above.

As always, click on the thumbnails for larger versions.

Next week: Getting to Spelling.