How to change language?

[e7968359]

I have just downloaded minetest but it is in my OS local language. How can I change it to english?

[Krock]

Welcome to the forums!

1) Select the tab "Settings" in the main menu
2) Press "Advanced Settings"
3) Type "language" in the search box and hit enter
4) Open the tree "Client & Server" and edit "Language" (both translated)
5) Use the dropdown menu and select "en"
6) Save and restart Minetest

If that does not work, find a directory called "locale" inside your Minetest installation and delete your translation files. That will result in an English interface as well.

[Linuxdirk]

Addition to that: If you’re on Linux and if you didn’t compile Minetest by yourself there is a very high possibility that none of this works because Minetest checks for the translations in a non-default location when not compiled with the correct path set.

The easiest solution is to link the wrong path to the correct path ln -s /usr/share/locale /usr/share/minetest.

[e7968359]

Thank you for your answers. I have successfully changed my language to english.

[Festus1965]

I have successfully changed my language to english.

What language did you have before ?

And for all:
There can only chosen the languages build in ?

Where they are defined ?

And how to get other languages in ?

[Walzy]

In the 5.2.0 version I can't set the english language. My OS language is french and I don't like Minetest in french...

[sfan5]

You can always open minetest.conf in a text editor and add a new line that says language = en

[Termos]

This gave me hell too, took me about 10 minutes to figure out.

The language setting interface became useless in 5.2.0, the two character strings are unintelligible.
There's no 'en' to be found, and apparently 'uk' stands for Ukrainian, finally by trial and error I think I've found
English is under 'el'.

[CST1229]

This gave me hell too, took me about 10 minutes to figure out.

The language setting interface became useless in 5.2.0, the two character strings are unintelligible.
There's no 'en' to be found, and apparently 'uk' stands for Ukrainian, finally by trial and error I think I've found
English is under 'el'.

"eu" isn't Europe. Some strings look like English, but then there's things like the delete world button text not being actually english.

[Firb_the_boy]

I wanted Minetest to be in Marathi technically known as "mr". I can't use that language in Minetest.

[iquoth]

Hi,
I can't change Minetest's language either. Here are details about the steps I tried:

OS
Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS (focal)

Minetest version (from flatpak install flathub net.minetest.Minetest)

Code: Select all

net.minetest.Minetest --version
Minetest 5.4.1 (Linux)
Using Irrlicht 1.8.4
Using LuaJIT 2.1.0-beta3
BUILD_TYPE=Release
RUN_IN_PLACE=0
USE_CURL=1
USE_GETTEXT=1
USE_SOUND=1
USE_FREETYPE=1
STATIC_SHAREDIR="/app/share/minetest"
STATIC_LOCALEDIR="/app/share/locale"

The file $HOME/.var/app/net.minetest.Minetest/.minetest/minetest.conf contains line language = nb

I use the flatpak app "flatseal" to export the following variables to the minetest app:

Code: Select all

LANGUAGE=nb_NO.UTF-8
LANG=nb_NO.UTF-8

The ingame "All Settings" menu shows Language: nb

Regarding the system, the locale has been installed with sudo apt install language-pack-nb, generated with sudo locale-gen nb_NO.UTF-8, and registered with sudo update-locale.
Also, I used the following flatpak commands as seen here:

Code: Select all

flatpak config --set languages "de;en;nb"
flatpak config --set extra-languages "nb"

Also, weblate shows that at least some content should be translated for norsk bokmal

Yes, I restarted both minetest and the computer several times. It's still 100% English.

The only remaining ideas that I have are

1. that line from version output stating STATIC_LOCALEDIR="/app/share/locale", though I don't know what to make of it. (Like, is there supposed to be a directory $HOME/.var/app/net.minetest.Minetest/.minetest/share/locale/nb? symlink to /usr/share/locale/nb probs wouldn't work because of flatpak sandboxing, right?)
2. setting the system's locale to nb as well, though that would be sub-optimal. (eg via localectl set-locale LANG=nb_NO.UTF-8)

Help would be very appreciated. I will gladly share additional information :)

[Linuxdirk]

$HOME/.var/app/net.minetest.Minetest/.minetest/share/locale/nb? symlink to /usr/share/locale/nb probs wouldn't work because of flatpak sandboxing, right?)

I had to do ln -s /usr/share/locale /usr/share/minetest in order to being able to change language. Maybe do the same with the Flatpak folders but not as absolute links but as relative links. Flatpak should follow those links then.

You don’t need to change any system language. Minetest completely ignores it.

[iquoth]

I tried symlinking both absolute...:

Code: Select all

mkdir $HOME/.var/app/net.minetest.Minetest/.minetest/share
ln -s /usr/share/locale $HOME/.var/app/net.minetest.Minetest/.minetest/share/locale

Booted minetest, no change in language, so I removed the new folder: rm $HOME/.var/app/net.minetest.Minetest/.minetest/share

... and relative paths:

Code: Select all

mkdir $HOME/.var/app/net.minetest.Minetest/.minetest/share
ln -rs /usr/share/locale $HOME/.var/app/net.minetest.Minetest/.minetest/share/locale

Booted minetest, no change in language, so I removed the new folder again: rm $HOME/.var/app/net.minetest.Minetest/.minetest/share


However, with all the changes of my earlier post still in place, I updated my flatpak apps with flatpak update, and the net.minetest.Minetest.Locale package got updated.

Now, Minetest is in Norwegian, as expected. Also, if I cange the ingame "All Settings" item Language: nb to Language: en, minetest is in English, as expected.

I guess that to change the language in flatpak installs, one needs to either

1. flatpak config --set languages "de;en;nb" as described before, and then flatpak update, to pull the new Locales from flathub, OR
2. just set the ingame "All Settings" menu to the desired language, and then flatpak update, to pull the new Locales from flathub

The important step seems to be to flatpak update to pull previously unselected locale files.

Thank you for your feedback ^u^