2021-05-04 03:22:36 (edited by JLove 2021-05-04 10:33:06)

For anyone who has the problem that I have had after installing Steam, where the client opens in simplified Chinese even though English was what I selected in the installer, I am going to give instructions on how to fix this.

THE PROBLEM

When installing Steam, you choose your language in the installer just like you do with any other program, and you proceed.  In my case, this was "English."  However, after install, upon logging in, Steam displays everything in Chinese, or a mix of English and Chinese.  Some other users of Steam reported languages other than Chinese that weren't the language they had chosen for install.  The solution suggested online of changing the language via the Steam settings inside of the client does not work for us, as screen readers cannot click on the application bar to open the menu to get to settings.  Therefore, we need a way to change the settings outside of Steam.

LIST OF AVAILABLE LANGUAGES

The following list gives all languages available to you.  You will use this list to specify your language with the below solution.
bulgarian
czech
danish
dutch
english
finnish
french
german
greek
hungarian
italian
japanese
koreana
norwegian
polish
portuguese
brazilian
russian
romanian
schinese
spanish
swedish
tchinese
thai
turkish
ukrainian
NOTE:  brazilian is for Portuguese-brazil.  schinese is for simplified Chinese, and chinese is for traditional chinese.

WARNING

The following solution involves adjusting values within the registry editor in Windows.  Backing up your registry is recommended.  If you are unfamiliar with the registry editor, please proceed with caution or get sighted assistance if you need to.  Modifying or deleting the wrong keys within the Windows registry can permanently corrupt your operating system, forcing you to completely reinstall it.

THE SOLUTION

The first thing you will want to do is to make sure that Steam is not running.  To do this:
1.  Open your task manager by pressing control plus shift plus escape.
2.  Make sure that the "processes" tab is the one that's open.  To do this, route Jaws to PC, then arrow up until you hear a line with processes and several other tabs.  Move to processes, and left click.  You may now return to PC cursor navigation.
3.  Make sure that the "more details" button is pressed.  To do this, tab once.  If you hear "more details button," you will want to press this.  Otherwise, if you hear, "column header, name sorted," you are good to go and can return to the list of tasks.
4.  Now, hit S until you hear "Steam client service (32 bit)."  Press alt plus E to kill the task.
5.  Make sure that no other Steam tasks are running.
Now that Steam is not running, it's time to adjust the pertinent values in the Windows registry.
1.  Open the registry editor.  To do this, open a run dialog box by holding the Windows key and pressing R.  Next, type "regedit" without the quotes, and press enter.
2.  Inside of the registry editor, you will see a tree view.  Navigate to the following path:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\VALVE\STEAM
Do not expand the tree view at Steam yet.
2.  Tab into the list view, and arrow down to the following:
LANGUAGE REG_SZ SCHINESE (This may be different if you have another language).
3.  Press enter to open this key.  In the "value data" field, erase what is there and type the language of your choice by finding it in the list above.  Make sure to write it exactly as shown there, in all lowercase.
4.  Press the OK button.
5.  Next, shift tab back up to the tree view.  Now, expand the view so that it says "Steam, open", and arrow down until you hear, "steamglobal."
6.  Tab back into the list view, and arrow down until you see:
LANGUAGE REG_SZ schinese
(Again, the language you hear might be different, depending on what yours displays as).
7.  Once again, open this key by pressing enter, and in the "value data" field, repeat what you did before.  Erase what is there and type your language of choice from the above list, in all lowercase.
8.  Press the OK button.
9.  You may now close the registry editor with alt-F4.
Try logging into your Steam client again, and you should notice that the language has been fixed successfully.

CONCLUSION

I hope that this helps those of you having language issues with Steam.  If you have any questions, or you need further help, feel free to drop a post in the forum topic I've created
here,
and I'll do my best to help you.  Happy gaming everyone!

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