Change git's language to English without changing the locale

Question

My locale is German. LANG=de_DE.UTF-8. I would like to keep it.

Is it possible to change git's language to English without changing the locale?

This is also discussed here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10633564/how-does-one-change-the-language-of-the-command-line-interface-of-git — Keith Smiley, Jul 16 '13 at 14:43

score 30 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 24 '13 at 22:56

30

You can add alias to you .bashrc or .bash_profile

alias git='LANG=en_US.UTF-8 git'

If LANG doesn't work, try LC_ALL or LANGUAGE

edited Jul 24 '13 at 22:56

sergej

answered Jul 16 '13 at 13:33

pondohva

run source .bashrc in command line – pondohva Jul 16 '13 at 13:56
@sergej Does the `LANG=en_US.UTF-8 git` command work for you? – Lucio Jul 16 '13 at 14:30
So it doesn't work. Before create an alias, you need to make this command work. Do you have the English language installed? – Lucio Jul 16 '13 at 14:58
try LC_ALL instead LANG – pondohva Jul 16 '13 at 17:33
2

For the discussion on `LANG` vs `LANGUAGE` vs `LC_ALL`: [Why is overriding the LANG environment variable not changing the language for me?](http://askubuntu.com/q/311767/88802) – gertvdijk Jul 24 '13 at 23:22
But this method will change the language not only for git, but for the whole terminal session, isn't it? – James Bond Nov 01 '20 at 14:27

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 14 '14 at 07:55

1

This worked for me:

echo "export LANGUAGE='en_US.UTF-8 git'" >> ~/.bashrc

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, git version 1.9.1

answered Aug 14 '14 at 07:55

DmitryDzz

3

This solution is wrong. First of all: The value for LANGUAGE is invalid. `git` is not allowed there. Second: You are setting the language for your whole bash session. It will affect other programs as well. – itsafire Aug 07 '17 at 12:12
This answer is confused about what `LANGUAGE` does. – alexis Nov 22 '18 at 08:07

2 Answers2