(gettext.info)The LANGUAGE variable

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2.3.3 Specifying a Priority List of Languages
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   Not all programs have translations for all languages.  By default, an
English message is shown in place of a nonexistent translation.  If you
understand other languages, you can set up a priority list of languages.
This is done through a different environment variable, called
‘LANGUAGE’.  GNU ‘gettext’ gives preference to ‘LANGUAGE’ over ‘LC_ALL’
and ‘LANG’ for the purpose of message handling, but you still need to
have ‘LANG’ (or ‘LC_ALL’) set to the primary language; this is required
by other parts of the system libraries.  For example, some Swedish users
who would rather read translations in German than English for when
Swedish is not available, set ‘LANGUAGE’ to ‘sv:de’ while leaving ‘LANG’
to ‘sv_SE’.

   Special advice for Norwegian users: The language code for Norwegian
bokmål changed from ‘no’ to ‘nb’ recently (in 2003).  During the
transition period, while some message catalogs for this language are
installed under ‘nb’ and some older ones under ‘no’, it is recommended
for Norwegian users to set ‘LANGUAGE’ to ‘nb:no’ so that both newer and
older translations are used.

   In the ‘LANGUAGE’ environment variable, but not in the other
environment variables, ‘LL_CC’ combinations can be abbreviated as ‘LL’
to denote the language’s main dialect.  For example, ‘de’ is equivalent
to ‘de_DE’ (German as spoken in Germany), and ‘pt’ to ‘pt_PT’
(Portuguese as spoken in Portugal) in this context.

   Note: The variable ‘LANGUAGE’ is ignored if the locale is set to ‘C’.
In other words, you have to first enable localization, by setting ‘LANG’
(or ‘LC_ALL’) to a value other than ‘C’, before you can use a language
priority list through the ‘LANGUAGE’ variable.