Some background: To run a program in a different language, you need to have configured locales, which (to my not-really-understanding understanding) is a bunch of data files off in
/usr/share somewhere. Typically, you edit /etc/locale.gen and then run locale-gen; or, if you wanna be fancy, it's dpkg-reconfigure locales and it'll give you a list of languages to check off for installation.But on my system now, there is no
/etc/locale.gen, though there mysteriously is a manpage for it. And the dpkg command just regenerates the English locales (all 15 of 'em, one for each dialect of English) without asking me anything.After some poking and prodding -- everything you'll find on Google describes the same procedure I gave two paragraphs up -- I finally discovered Ubuntu bug #48573, where someone basically says "Um, this used to work and it broke." And the response is, "That is intentional. We now have a Totally New Way to configure this and it's nicely controllable via System→Administration→Language Support."
Unfortunately I don't have a System→Administration→Language Support, nor do I know where to get one. Hrmph.
* I'm not really too upset about this, as I can recognize there may have been good reasons to make the change. On the other hand, I am upset that it was broken in such a way that I can't track down the fix.
