# Language

On this page you can set your preferred languages for the &kde; Workspace and Applications to be displayed in.

The &kde; Workspace and Applications are written in American English and are translated into many different languages by teams of volunteers. These translations need to be installed first before you can choose to use them. The list of Available Languages shows the localized language names of &systemsettings; translations installed and available on your system. If the language you want to use is not shown in this list then you will need to install it using the usual method for your system.

Ensure that you have installed the &kde; language packages or translations for the languages you want to use.

As &kde; is build upon the &Qt; libraries, you need the &Qt; translations for the selected languages as well to have a fully localized &GUI;.

The Preferred Languages list shows the localized language names that will be used when displaying the &kde; Workspace and Applications. Because not all of the KDE Workspace and Applications may be translated into every language &kde; will try to find suitable translations for you by working down the Preferred Languages list until it finds a translation. If none of your preferred languages have a required translation then the original American English will be used.

You can add a language to the Preferred Languages list by selecting it in the Available Languages and then clicking on the Add arrow button. If you have the listbox activated just type the first letter of your desired language. Type the first letter again to step through all matching entries in the list.

You can remove a language from the Preferred Languages list by selecting it and then clicking on the Remove arrow button. You can change the order of preference in the Preferred Languages list by selecting a language and clicking on the Up or Down arrow button.

Only languages listed in Preferred Languages and Available Languages will be offered as options for Primary language and Fallback language in the Switch Application Language dialog of the Help menu.

Language and Formats are independent settings. Changing a language does not automatically change the settings for numbers, currency &etc; to the corresponding country or region.