How to change language settings in R

R Problem Overview

My error messages are displayed in French. How can I change my system language setting so the error messages will be displayed in English?

R Solutions

Solution 1 - R

You can set this using the Sys.setenv() function. My R session defaults to English, so I'll set it to French and then back again:

> Sys.setenv(LANG = "fr")
> 2 + x
Erreur : objet 'x' introuvable
> Sys.setenv(LANG = "en")
> 2 + x
Error: object 'x' not found

A list of the abbreviations can be found here.

Sys.getenv() gives you a list of all the environment variables that are set.

Solution 2 - R

In the case of RStudio for Windows I succeeded in changing the language following the instructions found in R for Windows FAQ, in particular I wrote:

language = EN

inside the file Rconsole (in my installation it is C:\Program Files\R\R-2.15.2\etc\Rconsole); this works also for the command Rscript.

For example you can locate the Rconsole file with this two commands from a command prompt:

cd \

dir Rconsole /s

The first one make the root as the current directory, the second one looks for the Rconsole file.

In the following screenshot you have that Rconsole file is in the folder C:\Program Files\R\R-3.4.1\etc.

You may have more than one location, in that case you may edit all the Rconsole files.

After that you can open the Rconsole file with your favorite editor and look for the line language = and then append EN at the end of that line.

In the following screenshot the interesting line is the number 70 and you have to append EN at the end of it.

Solution 3 - R

For mac users, I found this on the R for Mac FAQ

> If you use a non-standard setup (e.g. different language than > formats), you can override the auto-detection performed by setting > force.LANG' defaults setting, such as for example > > defaults write org.R-project.R force.LANG en_US.UTF-8 > when run in Terminal it will enforce US-english setting regardless of the system > setting. If you don't know what Terminal is you can use this R command > instead: > > system("defaults write org.R-project.R force.LANG en_US.UTF-8") but do not forget to quit R and start R.app again afterwards. Please > note that you must always use .UTF-8' version of the locale, > otherwise R.app will not work properly.

This helped me to change my console language from Chinese to English.

Solution 4 - R

This works from command line :

$ export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

None of the other answers above worked for me

Solution 5 - R

If you use Ubuntu you will set

LANGUAGE=en

in /etc/R/Renviron.site.

Solution 6 - R

You may also want to be aware of the difference between, for example, Sys.setenv(LANG = "ru") and Sys.setlocale(locale = "ru_RU.utf8").

> Sys.setlocale(locale = "ru_RU.utf8")
[1] "LC_CTYPE=ru_RU.utf8;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=ru_RU.utf8;LC_COLLATE=ru_RU.utf8;LC_MONETARY=ru_RU.utf8;LC_MESSAGES=en_IE.utf8;LC_PAPER=en_IE.utf8;LC_NAME=en_IE.utf8;LC_ADDRESS=en_IE.utf8;LC_TELEPHONE=en_IE.utf8;LC_MEASUREMENT=en_IE.utf8;LC_IDENTIFICATION=en_IE.utf8"

If you are interested in changing the behaviour of functions that refer to one of these elements (e.g strptime to extract dates), you should use Sys.setlocale(). See ?Sys.setlocale for more details. In order to see all available languages on a linux system, you can run

system("locale -a", intern = TRUE)

Solution 7 - R

For me worked:

Sys.setlocale("LC_MESSAGES", "en_US.utf8")

Testing:

> Sys.setlocale("LC_MESSAGES", "en_US.utf8")
[1] "en_US.utf8"
> x[3]
Error: object 'x' not found

Also working to get english messages:

Sys.setlocale("LC_MESSAGES", "C")

To reset to german messages I used

Sys.setlocale("LC_MESSAGES", "de_DE.utf8")

Here is the start of my sessionInfo:

> sessionInfo()
R version 3.4.1 (2017-06-30)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Running under: Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS

Solution 8 - R

type this first: system("defaults write org.R-project.R force.LANG en_US.UTF-8") then you will get a index number(in my case is 127)

then type: Sys.setenv(LANG = "en") then type the number and ENTER 127

Solution 9 - R

A simple solution would be setting export Lang=C in your bash script. I had a similar issue where the default language was german so it reverted back to english.

Solution 10 - R

To permanently make it works, in both R and Rstudio (with Win 10), one way to do this is to run the script every time automatically in the background initially.

No more changing the system language that influence the windows. No more R only but fail in Rstudio. No more run a script every time manually. No more admin right but fail. No more short-cut setting but fail.

Step 1. Use your system search, to find the file named "Rprofile"

My response is

C:\Program Files\R\R-4.0.5\library\base\R

C:\Program Files\R\R-4.0.5\etc

Step 2. Edit C:\Program Files\R\R-4.0.5\library\base\R\Rprofile

The content:

This is the system Rprofile file. It is always run on startup.
Additional commands can be placed in site or user Rprofile files
(see ?Rprofile) ... and so on.

Step 3. Add Sys.setenv(LANGUAGE="en") at the end of the scrip

local({
    Sys.setenv(LANGUAGE="en")
})

That's all. Thank GOD and thank me LOL.

PS. If you encounter the issue of authorization/saving, move this file to desktop and replace the original file after editing.

PPS. Too angry for me to solve this issue. It's now 2021 but not 1976. This cost me around 53 hours with 3 times R download and 3 times of Rstudio. Numerous articles are reviewed. And numerous failures I encountered.

I want to try something fun.

This is my USDT wallet in Binance. TRC(20) TE8VbB2ZA6bSN1Aq3Qi6Gq7WGE89GEbYqA

If you feel good with this answer, please (and just) sent me 1.0 USDT to make me record the amount of donate in case you are a crypto user as the clap. Not more, please.
And please aware that I will not send USDT back in any case. LOL
If this offended the norms here, please inform me or delete/edit PPS. directly. Thank you.

Solution 11 - R

If you want to change R's language in terminal to English forever, this works fine for me in macOS:

Open terminal.app, and say:

touch .bash_profile

Then say:

open -a TextEdit.app .bash_profile

These two commands will help you open ".bash_profile" file in TextEdit.

Add this to ".bash_profile" file:

export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Then save the file, reopen terminal and type R, you will find it's language has changed to english.

If you want language come back to it's original, just simply add a # before export LANG=en_US.UTF-8.

Solution 12 - R

The only thing that worked for me was uninstalling R entirely (make sure to remove it from the Programs files as well), and install it, but unselect Message Translations during the installation process. When I installed R, and subsequently RCmdr, it finally came up in English.

Solution 13 - R

In Ubuntu 14.04 LTS I had to remove the # from the comment #LANGUAGE=EN.
All other options din not work for me.

Solution 14 - R

Change your current regional format to a different regional format in region settings on time&language settings in Windows by clicking on your time/date in lower right corner > adjust time/date > Region > change regional format to UK or US

Solution 15 - R

This worked for me with a windows 10 laptop in German, where I wanted i.e. lubridate to return dates in English:

Sys.setlocale("LC_TIME", "English")

Solution 16 - R

Im using R Studio on a Mac and I couldn't find the Rconsole file. So I took a more brutal way and just deleted the unwanted language files from the R app. You just have to go to your Rapp in your application Folder, right click, show package content then /contents/Resources/. There are the language files e.g. English.lproj or in my case de.lproj wich I deleted. After restarting R, error messages appear in English.. Maybe thats helpful!

Solution 17 - R

you simply have to change the basic language of microsoft on your computer!

press the windows button together with r, and tip the following code into the window that is opened

control.exe /name Microsoft.Language

load the language package you want to use and change the options. but take care, this will change also your keyboard layout!

Solution 18 - R

on windows, when you have no admin right, just create a new program shortcut to Rgui.exe. Then in the properties of that shortcut, go to the 'Shortcut' tab and modify the target to include the system language of your choice, e.g. "C:\Program Files\R\R-3.5.3\bin\x64\Rgui.exe" LANGUAGE=en

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	agstudy	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - R	Chase	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - R	Alessandro Jacopson	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - R	Xiang Li	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - R	Bilow	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - R	llobocki	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - R	giocomai	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 7 - R	jogo	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 8 - R	Emma	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 9 - R	rakesh singh	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 10 - R	Ivan C.	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 11 - R	Jiang	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 12 - R	RUser	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 13 - R	J_F	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 14 - R	swed1983	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 15 - R	aleksandereiken	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 16 - R	ben	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 17 - R	user8015143	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 18 - R	Sébastien Wieckowski	View Answer on Stackoverflow