gettext: The LANGUAGE variable

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1 2.3.3 Specifying a Priority List of Languages
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1    Not all programs have translations for all languages.  By default, an
1 English message is shown in place of a nonexistent translation.  If you
1 understand other languages, you can set up a priority list of languages.
1 This is done through a different environment variable, called
1 ‘LANGUAGE’.  GNU ‘gettext’ gives preference to ‘LANGUAGE’ over ‘LC_ALL’
1 and ‘LANG’ for the purpose of message handling, but you still need to
1 have ‘LANG’ (or ‘LC_ALL’) set to the primary language; this is required
1 by other parts of the system libraries.  For example, some Swedish users
1 who would rather read translations in German than English for when
1 Swedish is not available, set ‘LANGUAGE’ to ‘sv:de’ while leaving ‘LANG’
1 to ‘sv_SE’.
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1    Special advice for Norwegian users: The language code for Norwegian
1 bokmål changed from ‘no’ to ‘nb’ recently (in 2003).  During the
1 transition period, while some message catalogs for this language are
1 installed under ‘nb’ and some older ones under ‘no’, it is recommended
1 for Norwegian users to set ‘LANGUAGE’ to ‘nb:no’ so that both newer and
1 older translations are used.
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1    In the ‘LANGUAGE’ environment variable, but not in the other
1 environment variables, ‘LL_CC’ combinations can be abbreviated as ‘LL’
1 to denote the language’s main dialect.  For example, ‘de’ is equivalent
1 to ‘de_DE’ (German as spoken in Germany), and ‘pt’ to ‘pt_PT’
1 (Portuguese as spoken in Portugal) in this context.
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1    Note: The variable ‘LANGUAGE’ is ignored if the locale is set to ‘C’.
1 In other words, you have to first enable localization, by setting ‘LANG’
1 (or ‘LC_ALL’) to a value other than ‘C’, before you can use a language
1 priority list through the ‘LANGUAGE’ variable.
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