gettext: Setting the GUI Locale

 
 2.2 Setting the Locale Used by GUI Programs
 ===========================================
 
    The immediately available programs in a user’s desktop come from a
 group of programs called a “desktop environment”; it usually includes
 the window manager, a web browser, a text editor, and more.  The most
 common free desktop environments are KDE, GNOME, and Xfce.
 
    The locale used by GUI programs of the desktop environment can be
 specified in a configuration screen called “control center”, “language
 settings” or “country settings”.
 
    Individual GUI programs that are not part of the desktop environment
 can have their locale specified either in a settings panel, or through
 environment variables.
 
    For some programs, it is possible to specify the locale through
 environment variables, possibly even to a different locale than the
 desktop’s locale.  This means, instead of starting a program through a
 menu or from the file system, you can start it from the command-line,
 after having set some environment variables.  The environment variables
 can be those specified in the next section (⇒Setting the POSIX
 Locale); for some versions of KDE, however, the locale is specified
 through a variable ‘KDE_LANG’, rather than ‘LANG’ or ‘LC_ALL’.