SQLPLUS and Custom Languages

Even I'm from Romania, I don't like how the translation of various messages sounds into my own language. However, sometimes it's useful to enable such a feature if, for example, the error messages which come from the Oracle server must be displayed into the client application but using the native language. So, at the very beginning you might think it's enough just to issue an “ALTER SESSION SET NLS_LANGUAGE=ROMANIAN;” but most of the time you'll find that nothing changes. This is because Oracle needs some additional translation files which, of course, must be installed. To install them you'll need the well known Oracle Universal Installer and you have to provide -addLangs as a parameter. You'll be led into a special wizard page like the one shown below:


After choosing and installing the preferred language we can go on and test if now SQLPLUS speaks our lingo.

SQL> ALTER SESSION SET NLS_LANGUAGE=romanian;

Sesiune modificata.

SQL> select * from no_table;
select * from no_table
           *
EROARE la linia 1:
ORA-00942: tabelul sau vizualizarea nu exist?

SQL> select eroare bre;
select eroare bre
             *
EROARE la linia 1:
ORA-00923: cuvantul cheie FROM nu este g?sit in locul a?teptat

So far so good! Nevertheless, as I previously said the translated messages are quite funny. By the way, I already found three translation mistakes into the above output but I will let Romanian readers to find them. Aaaa, I almost forgot to say: those strange question marks are in place there because my database character set is not appropriate for displaying romanian characters therefore please don't count this as a translation error. :)