![Changing the language used for labels [new]](https://imgdetail.ebookreading.net/cover/cover/data/EB9781849517249.jpg)
The most recent version of gnuplot provides several new internationalization features. If you are plotting date/time data and set the format to display the month abbreviation rather than the number of the month, gnuplot can use the abbreviations appropriate to any language installed on your system. The following figure repeats the previous plot using month abbreviations and the Spanish language:
![Changing the language used for labels [new]](http://imgdetail.ebookreading.net/other/4/9781849517249/9781849517249__gnuplot-cookbook__9781849517249__graphics__7249_04_11.jpg)
Note that the month names are not capitalized, which is the convention in Spanish.
In the following script, the addition of one line translates our plot to Spanish:
set xdata time
set locale "es_ES.utf8"
set timefmt "%d/%m/%y %H:%M"
set format x "%b %Y"
plot 'timedat.dat' using 1:3 with linespoints
In order to use the new internationalization features, you must have the locale program installed on your system; how this is handled is highly system dependent. In Linux, you install the desired language packages, and get a list of the available locales at the system command line with locale -a. You can switch languages in gnuplot with the set locale command highlighted in the previous script, substituting a locale name from the available list. gnuplot should be able to detect the default language of your system, so if you want to create labels using your computer's native language, you will most likely need to do nothing. In the set format x line in the previous script we've used the symbols for the month abbreviation (%b) and for the full, four-digit year (%Y).