Selecting other language than the default causes a mix of languages in GNOME session

[Ricardo Pérez López]

Binary package hint: gdm

Steps to reproduce:

1. Use System -> Preferences -> Language selector and select the following languages in this order:
    - Español; Castellano (España)
    - Español; Castellano
    - English (United Kingdom)
    - English
2. Click on Apply System-Wide...
3. Restart the computer.
4. Select "Español; Castellano (España)" language on GDM login screen.
5. Start a new session. You can see that all the desktop is in Spanish language.
6. Log out to go again into the GDM login screen.
7. In the GDM login screen, select "English (United Kingdom)" language.
8. Start a new session.

RESULT: The desktop shows some things in English, some other things in Spanish.

[Ricardo Pérez López (ricardo)]

Screenshot of the desktop the just after step #5, correctly in Spanish.

[Ricardo Pérez López (ricardo)]

Screenshot of the desktop the just after step #8, with some strings in English and some other strings (incorrectly) in Spanish. I expected to see all the desktop in English because I selected "English (United Kingdom)" in GDM login screen.

[Ricardo Pérez López (ricardo)]

I don't know if this could be a gdm issue, a language-selector issue or maybe a gnome-session issue... I don't have the needed knowledge for that. Could any developer tell me which package may be related? Thanks in advance.

[Arne Goetje (arnegoetje)]

Neither of them is of fault. The LANGUAGE environment variable setting should have precedence over LANG. But some applications don't honor the LANGUAGE variable and only take LANG into account. Therefor those applications are buggy.

Therefor, if you set your environment variable to English (UK) and your Desktop language to Spanish with fallback to English, all applications are expected to use Spanish and only fall back to English when a Spanish translation is not available.

gdm only sets the LANG variable (environment), while language-selector lets you set LANG and LANGUAGE. That's a different issue and a bug is open for that.

[Ricardo Pérez López (ricardo)]

Great, thanks for the explanation, Arne.