Need help to change my sims language. (the game not simlish =P)

[Pakuska]

Hi everyone! My name is pakuska and im a simoholic.

I'm new to this forum and sorry this is my first post..
But I need help trying to figure out if its possible at all to change your sims language without reinstalling it.. >.< The guides on this site are AMAZING. but one thing that holds me back for utilizing them to their potential. Is the fact my game is in dutch, and the guides are in english. So I want to change my game to english, instead of dutch since everything is called differntly in dutch. (obviously ;P)

Please let me know if thats possible or not. and thank you for reading. =]

Sincerely,
Pakuska.

[Pam]

Welcome to the Forum, Pakuska!

I don't know of a way to change your game to English.  We have some other members who don't use an English version of the game and they might be able to help you better than I can.

[Metropolis Man]

I did a Google search for you and found This Tutorial on YouTube. I hope it helps.

[PJSim]

The safest way to do it is to reinstall the game and choose English from the start, but that's annoying, I know.

You can also edit the registry. Just be really careful what you're doing in there, if you do something wrong you could end up having to reinstall the game anyway. Here's what you do:

Run "regedit" from the Start menu. This opens the Registry Editor.

Find this location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Sims
There will be a folder for The Sims 3 and each of EP's (if you have them), you need to change the language for each one.

Click on each folder and there will be something called "Locale". Make a note of what it says there under Data (maybe NL for Dutch?) in case you need to change it back.

Double-click on Locale and change Value Data to "en-US". Do this for each game/EP folder.

You can also change the country to "US" but I don't think that's necessary. Mine says "DK" there (because I live in Denmark) but my game is still in English.

[Swede1992]

Cool, I play the Swedish version and didn't know I even had the English versions installed. I think I'll stick with Swedish anyways, I've played Sims in Swedish from Sims 1 so it feels like one of those games that shouldn't be in English for me.

[Pakuska]

I have checked the Reg Edit and there is no sims map under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and im too scared to look further in it on my own. =P lol

But nevertheless thanks for your welcome Pam and thanks for your guide metropolisman and thanks for typing that all out and showing your understanding PJSim.

EDIT : I forgot to mention im using Win7 64Bit version. =X

[The Illuminator]

What could happen? By the way, I'm Dutch, so if you need help until you've solved it, PM me.

[Leto85]

Before doing anything, please backup your savegames first! Nothing is worse than losing your digital sim world!
If nothing helps you what other people already have said here, backup your game anyway, reinstall your game, set the language to English, Simlish of whatever you prefer and put your save files back to where they belong.
Of course you could just not do this all and continue playing with your Dutch version, using a translation site like w w w .vertalen. nu. It translates from Dutch to English, or German, French, Italian, Spanish etc. Only not simlish, which is a huge shortcoming.

I've played it in Dutch too, because I'm used to it for the past 10 years now but mostly I can follow the English forums. Only with the grapes and fishes I have difficulties, but after I translated them, it only can improve my English which makes The Sims 3 a bit of a learning program too.

Hi everyone! My name is pakuska and im a simoholic.

I'm new to this forum and sorry this is my first post..
But I need help trying to figure out if its possible at all to change your sims language without reinstalling it.. >.< The guides on this site are AMAZING. but one thing that holds me back for utilizing them to their potential. Is the fact my game is in dutch, and the guides are in english. So I want to change my game to english, instead of dutch since everything is called differntly in dutch. (obviously ;P)

Please let me know if thats possible or not. and thank you for reading. =]

Sincerely,
Pakuska.

[RaShCl]

Run "regedit" from the Start menu. This opens the Registry Editor.

Find this location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Sims
There will be a folder for The Sims 3 and each of EP's (if you have them), you need to change the language for each one.

I have done that on my pc with windows 7 64.
But there is no folder named sims in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Sims.
Not even in other parts of the regedit.

Any idea where I then can find it to change the languages?

[PJSim]

Oh yeah, sorry. I just saw this needs updating.

64-bit Windows has an extra folder called Wow6432Node.

So for everyone it should be like this once you're in Regedit:

Open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Open SOFTWARE
(For 64-bit systems only, open Wow6432Node)
Open Sims
Inside that folder will be a folder for every Sims game you have installed. Change Locale in each one to en-US.

You can also change the country to US (or whatever you like I guess). This should change the language in the launcher.

[RaShCl]

Thanks a lot. I've never heard about that extra directory.
So thanks for the quick update.

Oh before I forget a extra thanks.
Since I saw alot of stuff in that dir that was obsolete and hadent cleanded out by the reg cleaner I use.

Edited by Leto85. Please start new lines with a capital and using I with a capital I. End lines with a dot please and write thanks as thanks, not as thx. Thanks!

[crazy456kitten789]

Swede1992 Cool, I play the Swedish version and didn't know I even had the English versions installed. I think I'll stick with Swedish anyways, I've played Sims in Swedish from Sims 1 so it feels like one of those games that shouldn't be in English for me.

I was asking I have just moved to Sweden from England and my Mum bought me The Sims 3 Generations in Swedish. Do you know if I can still have my game in English?

[PJSim]

Yes, the English version will be there too. In fact I think you get the English version no matter where you buy the game, I think it's the default in the game files.

Just choose English when you install it, or if you already have the base game installed the installer will automatically choose the same language for EP's. Does for me anyway.

[crazy456kitten789]

Thank you! I did not want to have to tell my Mum that I could not play the game!

[Leto85]

Thank you! I did not want to have to tell my Mum that I could not play the game!

That's mostly the case with buying new games. The cover is in the language of the country you where buying it, but the software is standard English. And depending on the popularity of the game you can install it in several languages. I've reinstalled mine to English (first was Dutch) to improve communication here.
I'm so used to the English version now, I mostly don't even know how to translate sim things to Dutch anymore. Talk about integration in reverse.