How does one change the language of the command line interface of Git?

Adding this line solved the problem for me: Update: it seems like more components require a Locale as well now.

$ more ~/.bash_profile

export LANG=en_US (obsolete)

export LANG="en_US.UTF-8" (Updated)

If you just want to have one command in english instead you can just write LC_ALL=C before the command, for example:

LC_ALL=C git status

will result in

# On branch master
nothing to commit, working directory clean

The locale as used in C is English and always available without installing additional language packs
(see https://askubuntu.com/a/142814/34298)

To change it for the whole current bash session just enter

LANG=C

To change it for example to german enter

LANG=de_DE.UTF-8

Add these lines to your ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile or ~/.zprofile to force git to display all messages in English:

# Set Git language to English
#alias git='LANG=en_US git'
alias git='LANG=en_GB git'

The alias needs to override LC_ALL on some systems, when the environment variable LC_ALL is set, which has precedence over LANG. See the UNIX Specification - Environment Variables for further explanation.

# Set Git language to English
#alias git='LC_ALL=en_US git'
alias git='LC_ALL=en_GB git'

In case you added these lines to ~/.bashrc the alias will be defined when a new interactive shell gets started. In case you added it to ~/.bash_profile the alias will be applied when logging in.