Change compiler errors language in Visual Studio 2013

Question

I installed the english version of Visual Studio 2013. The GUI is in English but compiler errors are in French. That's a nightmare when I want to Google an error...

How can I switch C# compiler output language to English ?

Answer 1

You'd have to switch your machine's system locale to English, Control Panel + Language.

That's a rather impactful change since it also changes the locale for every other program on your machine. One thing you can try (but I cannot verify) is to whack the localization file that the C# compiler uses for strings. On your machine it should be located in c:\windows\microsoft.net\framework\v4.0.30319\1036\cscui.dll. Rename the file so the C# compiler can't find it and is forced to fallback to, hopefully, English. Btw, I guessed at 1036, there are lots of French locales. Locale IDs are listed here.

Answer 2

I have solved this as well. Switching language in the IDE did not worked for me, because if the MS compiler was invoked from another program (Qt Creator in my case), the language output was still in the locale language.

Solution: Remove the language you don't want from Visual Studio using the installation tool and leave only English. It's clean, you don't have to mess with the internal files and you even save some disk space.