[jretzner]

My Mac Book Air (OS 10.5) came back to me from a friend with all of the System banners and labels in Spanish. How do I get them back to English?

[Spheric Harlot]

Apple menu --> system preferences (Spanish equivalent) --> international (the blue flag icon)

The new language will apply to any application you launch after that. You'll need to log out to get the whole system running in English.

[angelmb]

System Preferences = Preferencias del Sistema
International = Internacional

Language & Text = Idioma y texto (for 10.6 and later)

balls = cojones !!

[jretzner]

One more part of it: after getting International Languages, DRAG the language you want to the top, and then restart.

[angelmb]

Sure you need to restart.? Usually, as soon as you drag your favorite language to the top, the next app you fire up should already reflect this change. So you might be running e.g. Mail in spanish and Safari in english concurrently.

For the Mac OS X to get running in the new language, a log out-log in, as S.H. pointed out, is in order.

Sure, you could restart (Force Quit) the Finder (command-option-esc), so you get the new language set without having to log out or restart the Mac, but that would only work for the Finder. Any other app, you should close it and open it again.

[reader50]

Try just the log-out / log-in. Then pull a USB flashdrive without unmounting it first.

"Por favor idiota primera unidad desmontar."

Assorted background deamons would still be in Español until a reboot.

[angelmb]

^^ A perfect balance between being funny and instructive.