Change language of the SAS Log

Question

Is it possible to change the language of the SAS log after a session has been spawned?

If not, is it possible to spawn a session with a particular language, based on a particular user id?

Answer 1

From this: http://support.sas.com/resources/papers/LocaleSwitching.pdf

it indicates that "Messages written to the SAS log ... always display in the language on startup."

To change the language of SAS on startup, you need to make an entry in the config file. If you are using default configuration files, you can find one for each installed language in the appropriate NLS folder. For 9.3 this is stored here: C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\nls\en\sasv9.cfg

replacing 'en' with 'language of your choice'. You can tell it to use that config file in your shortcut to SAS. For example, you might have two startup shortcuts, one with EN and one with JP (japanese), defined as having the following target (right click on shortcut, properties, then look at 'shortcut' tab, then Target):

First shortcut (English): "C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\sas.exe" -CONFIG "C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\nls\en\sasv9.cfg"

Second shortcut (Japanese): "C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\sas.exe" -CONFIG "C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\9.3\nls\jp\sasv9.cfg"

If these shortcuts are stored on the desktop (or any other userhome location) they'll be user-specific, so your other-language-user can simply define their shortcut however they want. Just make sure SAS is installed with that language as an option.

If you have customized your config file, you will need to make the same customizations to the various language files; or you will need to take that customized file and change the LOCALE to the proper localization. It's probably easiest to take the customized file, open the correct localization's original file, and copy the line from there to make sure you have the right abbreviation (though they seem to usually use standard abbreviations). For EN_US this is the line: -LOCALE en_US