[Development Guides Home](/guides) >> [Guide to Locales](/guides/guide-to-locales)

# Guide to Locales - The Snowman Locale

## Introduction

The `i_cpanel_snowmen` locale allows you to quickly test localization. This locale translates every localized string in the interface into several Unicode snowman characters (`☃`). This allows you to easily find hardcoded strings (strings that do not exist inside a `locale.maketext()` wrapper) without the need to search code manually.

Because the `i_cpanel_snowmen` locale is a cPanel-provided locale, you **cannot** remove this locale from the server.

Note:
We hide the `i_cpanel_snowmen` locale by default. To make the `i_cpanel_snowmen` locale visible, create the following touch file: `/var/cpanel/enable_snowmen` To hide the `i_cpanel_snowmen` locale, remove the touch file.

## Basic usage

You can use the `i_cpanel_snowmen` locale to test the localization in custom interfaces, or to ensure that your customizations did not cause problems in existing strings.

To do this, perform the following steps:

1. Navigate to cPanel's [*Change Language*](https://docs.cpanel.net/cpanel/preferences/change-language/) interface (*cPanel >> Home >> Preferences >> Change Language*).
2. Select the *☃ cPanel Snowmen ☃ - i_cpanel_snowmen* locale from the *Select a Language* menu.
3. Click *Change*. The interface reloads with the new locale.


When the interface displays in the `i_cpanel_snowmen` locale, only the following types of text will continue to display in the default locale:

* Localized words that exist in [`[asis]` bracket notation](http://search.cpan.org/~dmuey/Locale-Maketext-Utils-0.41/lib/Locale/Maketext/Utils.pod#asis()).
* The cPanel account's username.
* Filenames and other technical data that does not change when translated.
* Hardcoded strings, which do not exist inside a `locale.maketext()` wrapper.


## Help! I accidentally selected the snowmen locale

If you accidentally selected the `i_cpanel_snowmen` locale, use one of the following methods to select the correct locale:

* If you did not navigate away from the *Change Language* interface, select the correct locale and click the button directly below the menu. This button will appear similar to the following example: ![bluesnowmen](/assets/bluesnowmen.d4d1da783a9b71678f056d0eb9da24227bacb5a5cd0cff5abfb28d4abc1facfb.d194a35e.png)
* If you navigated away from the *Change Language* interface, click the *Logout* button in the top right corner of the interface. The login interface allows you to select a different locale. This button appears similar to the following example: ![whitesnowmen](/assets/whitesnowmen.c054259fd663dd57de2b39369e2a52fdc153bdf5e56411cf041b86f5cffa0fbc.d194a35e.png)