switching my imac from japanese to english

Thursday, April 17th, 2003

This was a search I received on Google today, and although the person probably didn’t find what they were looking for I’ll give you a quick how-to here, and maybe someone will find it useful. My system is currently in English, and this site is not currently encoded to display japanese so I will write in romanized Japanese when Japanese is necessary, and it will probably be a little bit off. so without further ado, here is how to switch my (your) imac from Japanese to English:

1) Click the system preferences (light switch looking) icon in your dock
2) If you only have a few icons, click the light switch icon again in the new window to show all (maybe subete wo hyouji or something like that)
3) Click the blue flag icon (gengo I think)
4) locate English in the top list of languages (nihongo should be at the top now. Click and hold the mouse button when your pointer is over English, keeping the mouse button held, drag English to the top of the list.)
5) Reboot your system
6) away you go

Now in my CD Player: The Prey from the album “Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death” by Dead Kennedys or if you are in Japan, click here

By UltraBob at 05:06 PM Link to this post here!
3 comment s


  • on April 18th, 2003 07:03 PM Gary said:

    Bob,

    I have an iMac at home, and run OS X. I persuaded my friend to get one too, and now have to provide him with support for the #### thing…

    Do you know how to set up different users with different language preferences ?- I read about it when I first upgraded to OS X, but now can’t find it anywhere.

    Good to meet you the other night, by the way.

  • on April 18th, 2003 07:11 PM UltraBob said:

    Gary,

    It was great meeting you too.  I also do know the answer to your question, and it is very easy.  My girlfriend’s account is in Japanese, and mine is in English.  All you need to do is log into the account you want to change and follow the instructions on this post.  The other account should remain the same.  After a reboot your friend should be sitting pretty.  Unless I’m mistaken, language settings only apply to the account you are currently logged into.  Og course you must remember if the application doesn’t have the language, you won’t get the language. (for example on my iMac my settings are for English, but Appleworks is in Japanese) Hope this helps, and if it doesn’t work let me know.  We aim to please here at Dynamic Duo.  (Well at least one of us does.  The other one seems to have abandoned the site.)

    UltraBob

  • on April 20th, 2003 07:20 PM iM said:

    UB, you do not need to reboot to have the languge selection take effect. All you need to do is logout and then log back in.

    The keystroke for logging out is CMD+Shift+Q. Make sure you know your password. You do want to be able to log back in, don’t you?