I've been using the current version of Ubuntu (with great pleasure)for a while now, but this is my first problem (and hence my first post).

My problem is that Update Manager downloads 84 updates (at last count) - including new versions of Chrome & Thunderbird. When I try to install them, it runs for a while and then I get this message:

installArchives() failed: dpkg: error: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 0:
field name `../../../help-langpack/software-center/ca/software-center.xml' must be followed by colon
Error in function:


I haven't been able to find this exact problem on the forum and wd be very grateful if someone can help me sort this out.

Many thanks