diff --git a/gitk b/gitk
index 1da0b0af1d..629acfbcc5 100755
--- a/gitk
+++ b/gitk
@@ -8476,6 +8476,25 @@ set diffcolors {red "#00a000" blue}
 set diffcontext 3
 set selectbgcolor gray85
 
+## For msgcat loading, first locate the installation location.
+if { [info exists ::env(GITK_MSGSDIR)] } {
+    ## Msgsdir was manually set in the environment.
+    set gitk_msgsdir $::env(GITK_MSGSDIR)
+} else {
+    ## Let's guess the prefix from argv0.
+    set gitk_prefix [file dirname [file dirname [file normalize $argv0]]]
+    set gitk_libdir [file join $gitk_prefix share gitk lib]
+    set gitk_msgsdir [file join $gitk_libdir msgs]
+    unset gitk_prefix
+}
+
+## Internationalization (i18n) through msgcat and gettext. See
+## http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Tcl.html
+package require msgcat
+namespace import ::msgcat::mc
+## And eventually load the actual message catalog
+::msgcat::mcload $gitk_msgsdir
+
 catch {source ~/.gitk}
 
 font create optionfont -family sans-serif -size -12