TYPO3 Core

On an empty installation with TYPO3 4.2 svn no languages are shown in the EM. There is a big list of empty entries.

Reason: The setup extension has not been installed.
Solution: Nothing shall be shown in the translation list.

Same issue here with french translation.
Directory typo3conf/l10n/fr remains void while the extension manager reports translation status is OK where possible.

Note : When i first attempted to fetch translations, CURL was disabled in my install tool. Now enabling curl doesn't seem to solve the issue. Should I delete the l10n forlder ?

Yes, try to delete the whole fr folder and try again. Otherwise report this also on the Translation newslist
typo3.translation.general

Many translations are displayed as ERR under TYPO3 4.2.0.

How can this be fixed?

Look if downloaded zip files are present in the typo3temp/ directory.

If so, it is likely you are missing the software /bin/unzip and l10n files are downloaded properly but fail to be extracted.

In order to solve this issue, delete all -l10n.zip files from the typo3temp/ directory, install /bin/unzip and run translation check/update once again. This should solve the issue.

Thanks. After having deleted the *.zip files in the typo3temp folder I could install all translations without any error.

The software zip and unzip has already been installed on the system.

I too had this problem (zip files were downloaded but not installed) even the unzip command was present. After deleting all typo3temp/*-l10n-* files and running the update process again the typo3conf/l10n/* files were updated...

Sort of a bug?