vSphere Client In Different Language [How-to]

It's possible to execute the vSphere client in different language. vSphere Windows client (C#) and also vSphere Web client. Without re-installing of course. The steps are fairly simple but I wanted to document for myself, and thought that it might also be usefull for others.

The use case for this? I can't tell for languages I don't speak, but I need at least two – English and French. But IT consultants working in different areas in the world might need this might other languages. There are also German or Japanese, Chinese and Corean locales available.

vSphere Client In Different Language [How-to]

The default installation of vSphere client is usually done in English and the shortcut you got on the desktop. Make a copy of that shortcut first and then do a right click > properties. As you can see, there is a en_US locale at the end in the Target …. Simply change it to another language.

Here are the available locales for vSphere client (for vSphere 5.x):

English: en_US
German: de_DE
Japanese: ja_JP
Simplified Chinese: zh_CN
French: fr_FR
Korean: ko_KR

Normally the client installs in:

“C:Program FilesVMwareInfrastructureVirtual Infrastructure ClientLauncherVpxClient.exe” -locale en_US

but sometimes its the x86 path…

“C:Program Files(x86)VMwareInfrastructureVirtual Infrastructure ClientLauncherVpxClient.exe” -locale en_US

The results:

vSphere Web Client In Different Language [How-to]

For the vSphere web client is is similar…

The default URL for the vSphere Web Client is:

https://client-hostname:9443/vsphere-client

To force a locale change to this:

English: /?locale=en_US
German: /?locale=de_DE
French: /?locale=fr_FR
Japanese: /?locale=ja_JP
Korean: /?locale=ko_KR
Chinese: /?locale=zh_CN

For example, to display the vSphere Web Client in French, use:

https://client-hostname:9443/vsphere-client/?locale=fr_FR

So in my case it looks like this:

https://10.10.7.28:9443/vsphere-client/?locale=fr_FR

As you can see it's very easy. The previous versions of VMware vSphere (vSphere 4.0 and 4.1) provided lower number of translations. So If you run previous version of the client you can check how to cinfigure.

Here is the original VMware kb here: Forcing a localized vSphere Client or vSphere Web Client installation to launch in a localized language/English