Anyway, both my perl and gtk install were done as my computer was set to French and the labels are still displayed in English

As someone who speaks only English, I have absolutely no experience of the issues faced by those who would prefer a language other than English.

When you use warnings; and warnings are emitted, are they in French ?
If so, I would have expected your Gtk2::Stock buttons to have French labels - unless perhaps your gtk libraries were built for "English".

I'll check the gtk-perl mailing list

I do subscribe to the gtk-perl mailing list, and I'll be interested to see what they have to say.

Cheers,
Rob