OK I succeeded to solve my problem so I reply to myself and give the solution here in case it could help someone else
It was a problem with french language file from CB 1.2.1. My default language is french - which explain my bad english
- and french language file from CB 1.2.1 breaks something during CB component update to 1.9. A working solution is to remove french language file before starting to update CB component.
But in my case it was too late, so I had to do some "hack" manually. Inside directory components/com_comprofiler/plugin/language/french I renamed cbteamplugins_language.php file to cbteamplugins_language_OLD.php
After that the CB component in joomla admin worked again, so I was able to do the last step of CB update. I downloaded the new french language file for CB 1.9 from here
extensions.joomla.fr/extensions/index-des-extensions-fr/weblink/50/4193/1
and install it as any CB plugin. Then I removed completely the old language file with CB plugin manager.
Hope it could help !