Hi all,

I created a Bash script some time ago, and thought users might find it helpful (or maybe just cool/neat) to be able to run the script in their own language. I created a copy of it using Spanish prompts, and that works well. However, wouldn't it make more sense to create a file (or maybe a set of files) with the respective translations of the commands, options and messages, and let a user choose what language to use at run-time?

Instead of maintaining a script in 10, or even 30 languages, I could maintain it in one, set a default, and let users choose from whatever languages are available (independent of the language environment variables). The various languages could be maintained independently as well. Does anyone have experience with this?

yes, that is the usual way. You need a table to index all the available messages and open a language-dependent text collection. In your script you only need to print messages by index....

Many thanks. I kept looking, and think I may have found a good tutorial describing the process in some depth:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/...e-bash-scripts

This appears to set the language based on the user's locale settings, but I suppose I could offer the user a prompt to change that, if they so desired.