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MySQL 5.4 Reference Manual :: 9 Internationalization and Localization :: 9.2 Setting the Error Message Language
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9.2. Setting the Error Message Language

By default, mysqld produces error messages in English, but they can also be displayed in any of several other languages: Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Norwegian-ny, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, or Swedish.

You can select which language the server uses for error messages using the instructions in this section.

To start mysqld with a particular language for error messages, use the --language or -L option. The option value can be a language name or the full path to the error message file. For example: 

shell> mysqld --language=swedish

Or: 

shell> mysqld --language=/usr/local/share/swedish

The language name should be specified in lowercase.

By default, the language files are located in the share/mysql/LANGUAGE directory under the MySQL base directory.

For information about changing the character set for error messages (rather than the language), see Section 9.1.6, “Character Set for Error Messages”.

You can change the content of the error messages produced by the server using the instructions in the MySQL Internals manual, available at http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/MySQL_Internals_Error_Messages. If you do change the content of error messages, remember to repeat your changes after each upgrade to a newer version of MySQL.