# Forwarding windows event logs in another language

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/forwarding-windows-event-logs-in-another-language/204067>\
**Category:** Beats\
**Tags:** winlogbeat\
**Created:** [October 17, 2019, 1:30pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/forwarding-windows-event-logs-in-another-language/204067 "2019-10-17T13:30:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![username11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e5b9ba/32.png) [@username11](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/username11)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2019, 1:30pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/forwarding-windows-event-logs-in-another-language/204067/1 "2019-10-17T13:30:51Z")

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Greetings. We are currently trying to ingest logs from a Windows server with a system language other than English. Because of that, the logs retrieved by Winlogbeat are not in English, and we need to get them in line with the logs from our other Windows servers. Changing the system language is not an option.

From what I could find, it seems that Windows event logs are not stored in a language-dependent format, and are printed in accordance with the system language, so it should be possible to read them in another language, but there is surprisingly little knowledge on that matter.

We tried to change the language of the user Winlogbeat runs as, but that did not help. Does anyone know if there is a workaround that would allow us to forward the logs in English?

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**Author:** ![Michael\_Madden](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/michael_madden/32/46640_2.png) [@Michael\_Madden](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Michael_Madden)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2019, 2:44pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/forwarding-windows-event-logs-in-another-language/204067/2 "2019-10-17T14:44:17Z")

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Hello,

winlogbeat currently sets the language value to 0 which means to use the system default. This is not currently configurable. I would recommend making a new enhancement request here to make this language setting user configurable.

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Please let us know if you have further questions.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![username11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e5b9ba/32.png) [@username11](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/username11)\
**Post date:** [October 18, 2019, 6:43am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/forwarding-windows-event-logs-in-another-language/204067/3 "2019-10-18T06:43:10Z")

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Guess I'll do that. Thanks.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [November 15, 2019, 6:43am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/forwarding-windows-event-logs-in-another-language/204067/4 "2019-11-15T06:43:19Z")

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