How to force reading CD(-RW)?

[Ralf Mardorf]

You get English output, if you add "LANG=C" in front of the command.
e.g.

LANG=C ls /media/$USER/CDROM/

btw. you don't need the braces.

Did you try mounting from command line?

sudo mkdir -p                 /media/optical
sudo chown    root:cdrom      /media/optical
sudo mount -t auto /dev/cdrom /media/optical