I've posted to ubuntuforums too but haven't had any replies.

I had Kubuntu Hardy (KDE 3.5) and upgraded to Jaunty (KDE 4.2). On Hardy I had 3 languages installed British English, US English and Chinese (Traditional) and use Skim to help me to learn Chinese. I don't read Chinese at all.

My locale was set to British English and under Hardy (3.5) everything was fantastic.
Skim worked like a charm and I could read and practise writing Chinese.

After upgrading to Jaunty all the system entries and all system dialogs and applications were Chinese, which made using my computer challenging, not being able to read Chinese. After struggling for several hours to navigate and configure the system (all to no avail) I removed the Chinese language completely.

However, now the state is that half of the strings displayed in dialogs and applications are English and half are Chinese - here's a screenshot to give an idea.

I tried removing my ($HOME)/.kde folder and loggin off/on again to let it get recreated but it didn't make any difference there is still a mixture of Chinese and English. I've edited some of the menu entries, but some revert to Chinese and e.g. lot sof the applets in Confoiguration menu I have no idea how to change the titles etc.

What I'd like is that ALL applications/menus/dialogs/configurations be displayed in English. If you can offer any advice on restoring everything to English I'd be over the moon.

I'll monitor the ubuntuforums post and keep that updated as well but I don't hold any hope of getting a reply there.

Thanks.

man locale? Try

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locale -a

to see a list of locales installed.

Thanks. Here's what I get.

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locale -a

C
en_AU.utf8
en_BW.utf8
en_CA.utf8
en_DK.utf8
en_GB.utf8
en_HK.utf8
en_IE.utf8
en_IN
en_NG
en_NZ.utf8
en_PH.utf8
en_SG.utf8
en_US.utf8
en_ZA.utf8
en_ZW.utf8
POSIX


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locale
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
LC_CTYPE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=


Unfortunately I don't know where information on KDE's localisation settings are stored. Is a new user affected?

Hmm interesting - creating a new user results in the new user having everything in English. I'll take a look around in their home directory to see if I can find anything useful.

Well my system is back to completely English interface now, but I don't have the satisfaction of understanding why.

I've tried a huge amount of things - especially with the Regional/Language settings - uninstalling/re-installing languages, changing system language, adding and removing languages.

Somehow during all of the tweaking it's back to the correct state.

I'm unhappy about not knowing why this happened or how it was fixed as it won't be of help to anyone else. All I can suggest is keep hacking away at the Regional / Language settings until you hit the magic combination.

Now less than an hour later and with NO intervention on my part it's reverted back to Chinese and English again.

I'm beginning to think I'll have to go back to 3.5.

Something is wrong here. It must still think your language is Chinese somehow. Can you ensure that the language is set correctly at the system level please? Also, can you ensure that you have set your language to English in System Settings > Regional & Language?

Finally, verify that any installed language packs are fully installed, and rebuild the sycoca:

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kbuildsycoca4 --noincremental

You may also want to ensure that your installation isn't damaged. Does this affect all applications, or just Kickoff?
If it only affects Kickoff, can you try out the classic menu? ( Kickoff Icon > Right Click > Switch to classic menu )
Did you access any part of your old account from your new one?

Yes there is definitely something wrong!

I've tried both the classic menu and kick-off menu. The language mixture is visible in other areas too - like choosing plasmoids (the descriptions and names are in Chinese) and most of the System Settings applets and their dialogs (the screenshot I posted earlier shows this if you'd like to see.)

Since yesterday I've managed to get it back into all English again but I'm worried now that if I restart X or the machine things will go back to mixed. Especially because it's not behaving as I understand it should.

I suspect that there is some "default" set of strings that are now in a mixture of languages and that a bug in the kubuntu upgrade process caused this condition.

But this is linux - it should be fixable?! The problem is I don't have knowledge to know where these things are stored or how to alter them.

Thanks for the tip about kbuildsycoca4 - it sounds like that may help.

I'm going to back up my home folder as it is now (hopefully this is it's correct configuration) and run the command as you suggest.

I also worry that I won't be able to install the Chinese language pack and write Chinese without messing up all the strings again.

Still that's the next step if things work out and are stable.