Some languages - like Hebrew - are written from right to left instead of left to right. When translating on launchpad, this works fine. But unfortunately it is displayed the other way round in-game: תירבע instead of the correct עברית.
I had a hard time figuring out how to actually set the game to use the Hebrew localization (found out in "/var/lib/locales/supported.d/he" that it's "he_IL.UTF-8" that must be edited in the wl config file) but now I can confirm that it's not only the string in the language selection, but actually every string is inverted in the game.
So I guess the way widelands localization works does either not support non-standard languages or it was simply forgot to switch Hebrew to right to left.
The second thing is, that when I start wl while Hebrew is the active system language, in the chat window I get only 'x' displayed for each Hebrew character . It looks like there's no unicode supported there, too?
I'm on an Ubuntu Karmic system with Hebrew support fully installed (I can use it in office and everywhere). And while I don't think full Hebrew support is crucial, I wanted to bring it to the attention of the developers that there are a few issues with this language.
Perhaps it's time to bite the bullet and use Pango for text layout? At some point, trying to implement everything ourselves isn't going to be good enough, and right-to-left support may be the turning point where it's finally worth the switch. I believe it's possible to use Pango and related technology independent of any widget toolkit or graphics API.