> how can I turn it on?

setenv LANG de
(or: LANG=de; export LANG)

> What can I do to improve german language support?

There is one thing where we probably would *realy* benefit from german
languag support: a sysinst translation.

Having the installer talk your native language is an immense bonus. It may
help avoid errors for those not realy fluent at computer english and it
looks nicer.

But: it's a lot of menues and messages to be translated.

We have a french version, so it's doable ;-)

> I've found a few files in a cryptic format in
> /usr/share/nls/de and /usr/share/locale/de/LC_MESSAGES.
> How can I edit/make new files with this format?

man gencat(1)


Martin