Choosing a default language

Overview

Most user-visible pages in Jira are now internationalized. When Jira is first installed, you can select from the default languages:

  • Chinese
  • Czech
  • Dutch
  • English (UK or US)
  • Finnish
  • French
  • German
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean (South Korean)
  • Polish
  • Portuguese (Brazilian)
  • Russian
  • Spanish (Spain) 
  • Swedish

The following languages have been discontinued in Jira 8.12. You can still choose them in Jira, but new messages will be in English:

  • Estonian
  • Icelandic
  • Romanian
  • Slovak
  • Danish
  • Hungarian
  • Norwegian

For all of the following procedures, you must be logged in as a user with the Jira administrators global permission.

On this page:

Changing the default language

  1. In the upper-right corner of the screen, select Administration  > System.

  2. In the sidebar, select General configuration
  3. Select the Edit settings button, then select the appropriate language in the drop-down box next to Default language.
    Any additional languages you have installed will appear in the list. See Translating Jira.

Per-user language selection

Individual users can manage their user profile, which will override the default language (see above).

Overriding the default translations of issue types, resolutions, statuses, and priorities

Should you wish, you can easily specify your own translations for the values of the following Jira issue fields:

  • Issue type
  • Priority
  • Status
  • Resolution

Your specified translations will override the values specified in the Jira translation.

Known issues

  • When you create a project using a system language other than English, Jira will create duplicates of default issue types, statuses, resolutions, and priorities. These duplicates won’t be translated into other languages chosen by your users. To work around this, either create new projects with the language set to English (and then change back to your preferred language) or provide custom translations for these duplicates (see Translating Jira constants).

Related topics

Last modified on Oct 7, 2022

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