How to change spell checker language

Question

I'm using Poedit/1.8.11 on Windows 10 to manage translations for a CakePHP project, namely English and Spanish.

For each catalog, I've chosen the translation language from the drop down list so I presume they are correct:

In source *.po they look like this:

• "Language: en_GB\n"
• "Language: es_AR\n"

Nonetheless, spell checker is checking both translations as Spanish. The program does not seem to recognise the language and I can't find any menu item to pick it manually:

Online help does not even mention spelling. How do you set the spell checking language in Poedit?

Answer 1

This isn’t a programming question, but a “how to use Windows 10” one. In Windows 8+, the spellchecker always uses the language of your keyboard (which is a different thing from its layout!).

See https://superuser.com/questions/480540/how-can-i-change-the-spell-check-and-auto-correction-language-of-ie10-windows8 for detailed instructions.

Answer 2

As Václav Slavík explains, Poedit does not implement its own spell checking solution. Instead, it relies on Windows builtin spell checker.

In any case, Windows spell engine appears to ignore both current input language at OS level:

... and current translation language set in gettext catalogue:

Instead, it appears to merge the dictionaries of all available languages and run a simultaneous check on all of them:

I understand it's a feature aimed at mobile users since it's similar to what Android virtual keyboard does but in this particular case it renders the entire tool useless.

Given that configuring languages is particularly difficult and counter-intuitive, I recommend to just ignore the feature.