I created a view which has three exposed filters. Everything works fine except the fact that I can neither translate or change the default string (-Any-) for the dropdowns. Is there a way to change this string to something more meaningful like "Please Select" and make it translatable so the German version displays "Bitte wählen"? I have two screen captures that may be helpful:

and

A further improvement would be the ability to change the text "any" to something like "please select a (field name here)" but I am losing hope for that =)

UPDATE

IMPORTANT: On further testing, I found that if you choose to display "-Any-" from "admin/build/views/tools", then THAT IS translatable.

Three options:

• You could change it with localisation, if you have that enabled already. Introducing localisation only for this string is far too much overhead.
• You can change it with a form_alter, if you already alter the form anyway. Introducing a module with a hook_form alter for just one string is way too much (maintainance and performance) overhead.
• You coud change it with a simple string override in your settings.php

In Drupal 7 (Drupal6 differs in details only)

/**
 * String overrides:
 *
 * To override specific strings on your site with or without enabling locale
 * module, add an entry to this list. This functionality allows you to change
 * a small number of your site's default English language interface strings.
 *
 * Remove the leading hash signs to enable.
 */
$conf['locale_custom_strings_en'][''] = array(
   '<Any>'      => 'Whatever!',
);

Note though, that this will change every occurrance of the full string <Any> (case sensitive) to Whatever, not just the ones in that single form.