Tableau Server is localized into several languages and has language and locale settings that you can configure on a per-user (set on the User Account page) and system-wide basis (set on the Maintenance page). The Language setting controls user interface (UI) items such as menus and messages. The Locale setting controls items in views such as number formatting and currency.
Tableau Server obtains its default language setting during Setup. If the host computer is set to a language Tableau Server supports, it installs with that language. If it’s not a supported language, Tableau Server installs in English.
Another influence on which language and locale display when a user clicks a view is the user’s web browser. If a server user has not specified a Language setting on their User Account page, and their web browser is set to a language that Tableau Server supports, the browser’s language will be used—even if Tableau Server itself is set to a different language.
Here’s an example: Assume that Tableau Server has a system-wide setting of English as the Language for all users. Server user Claude does not have a language specified on his Tableau Server User Account page. Claude’s browser uses German (Germany) for its language/locale.
When Claude logs in to Tableau Server, the server UI displays in German and when he clicks View A, it’s using the Germany locale for numbers and currency. If Claude had set his user account Language and Locale to French (France), the UI and view would have been displayed in French. His user account setting supercedes those of his web browser, and both of those have precedence over Tableau Server’s system-wide setting.
Another setting to be aware of is the Locale setting in Tableau Desktop (File > Workbook Locale). This setting determines the locale of the data in the view, such as which currency is listed or how numbers are formatted. By default, Locale in Tableau Desktop is set to Automatic. However, an author can override that by selecting a specific locale. Using the above example, if the author of View A set Locale to Greek (Greece), certain aspects of the data in View A would display using the Greek (Greece) locale.
Here are the settings Tableau uses to determine language and locale, in the following order of precedence:
Workbook locale (set in Tableau Desktop)
Tableau Server User Account language/locale settings
Web browser language/locale
Tableau Server Maintenance page language/locale settings
Host computer’s language/locale settings