Changing the current language

Navigating the menus in an unfamiliar language
If you cannot read the menus because the text is in an unfamiliar language or has ??? characters, you can navigate the menus sequentially to change the language.
 * 1) Choose the second menu from the left in the Audacity menus at top left of the screen (on Mac, click on the first menu from the left)
 * 2) Choose the bottom item of that menu, which opens the Preferences
 * 3) In the list on the left of Preferences, choose the fifth item from the top
 * 4) On the right, open the drop-down box containing a list of the language choices
 * 5) Select the language you want and press "ENTER" on your keyboard.

Missing language choices
In Audacity, if only "English" or "System" choices are in the Languages box, ensure the "Languages" folder is in the correct location as follows:
 * Windows:
 * OS X:
 * Linux: if Audacity was installed from a repository package, or  if you compiled Audacity from source code.

Change language in the system settings
Alternatively, you can quit Audacity and edit the audacity.cfg settings file. The .cfg file can be edited with any text editor. The Audacity settings folder is located at:


 * Windows 98/ME:
 * Windows 2000/XP:
 * Windows Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8:
 * OS X:
 * Linux:

To change language, find the line [Locale] in the .cfg file and change the line underneath it to your preferred language using the two-digit ISO 639-1 code here. For example, "Language=en" (without quotes) sets English or "Language=de" sets German.

If the two lines for Locale do not exist (which will be the case if Audacity has only ever run in the system language) add the lines as in this example: [Locale] Language=de

Now save audacity.cfg, restart Audacity and it will launch in your chosen language.

Quicker fixes without finding the two-digit ISO code
If you delete the [Locale] line and the line under that, save the changes then restart Audacity, this will make Audacity run in the language the operating system runs in.

If you have (or ever had) the legacy Audacity 1.2 version running in your preferred language, delete audacity.cfg. Audacity will then take its language and other 1.2 settings from the stored 1.2 values. Preference settings which have no equivalent in 1.2 will return to default.

Supported non-English languages
As well as US English, the Audacity software supports a significant number of other languages. There are no localized versions of Audacity. Instead, single versions of Audacity for the various operating platforms are shipped with a "Languages" folder containing gettext .mo files. These files are then used to display the different languages.

Unicode characters
Audacity is Unicode and thus should display non-English languages correctly on any localisation of the operating system if the system supports that language.

Supported non-English languages in Audacity

 * af Afrikaans
 * ar Arabic
 * eu Basque
 * be Belarusian
 * bn Bengali
 * bs Bosnian
 * bg Bulgarian
 * my Burmese
 * ca Catalan
 * zh Chinese (Simplified)
 * zh_TW Chinese (Taiwan)
 * hr Croatian
 * cy Cymraeg (Welsh)
 * cs Czech
 * da Danish
 * nl Dutch
 * fa Farsi (Persian)
 * fi Finnish
 * fr French
 * ga Gaelige
 * gl Galician
 * ka Georgian
 * de German
 * el Greek
 * he Hebrew
 * hi Hindi
 * hu Hungarian
 * id Indonesian
 * it Italian
 * ja Japanese
 * km Khmer
 * ko Korean
 * lt Lithuanian
 * mk Macedonian
 * nb Norwegian (Bokmal)
 * oc Occitan
 * pl Polish
 * pt Portuguese
 * pt_BR Portuguese (Brazilian)
 * ro Romanian
 * ru Russian
 * sr_RS Serbian (Cyrillic)
 * sr_RS@latin Serbian (Latin)
 * sk Slovak
 * sl Slovenian
 * es Spanish
 * sv Swedish
 * tg Tajik
 * ta Tamil
 * tr Turkish
 * uk Ukrainian
 * ca_valencia Valencian
 * vi Vietnamese


 * Languages struck out have written translations but won't appear in Audacity until wxWidgets supports them.