SharePoint QA
stump
Member
My company has offices in US, China, Japan, Australia, Europe and various other countries. The question of whether we should install Language packs in SharePoint keeps coming up. Im curious to find out if others in this forum have installed language packs and how they have maintained consistency of the content loaded in SharePoint (some that needs to be in English) and what you have gained by installing the language packs.
Thank you!
Stump
SharePoint language packs are per site basis. Two users cannot use different languages on the same site, and it is up to the site creator (upon site creation) to decide which language will be used. In your case you can benefit from language packs for local sites, that will be used only in one language, all the global sites should remain with English templates.
To be honest, if users do understand English you should stick to it. Non-English templates can be a problem for you cause all the error messages have been translated. Finding the solution for some weird error in small European language (e.g. Croatian) might be a challenge.
Number of people reported to me that quality of translations is poor. I personally have more problem understanding my native language pack (Croatian) than English one.
So my best practice: Customer can have SharePoint in any language so long as it is English :))))
stump
Member
Toni,
Thanks for getting back to me. So the language packs just provides them the option to select an alternate option when creating sites. I like the option just provided for local sites (regional specific) since we have a centralized model based in the US and the administration team are english only speakers and can only support them in English.
So do Language packs just provide site templates in multiple languages which would mean the quick launch and other menu options, navigation is in an alternate language? documentation is so vague and scarce in this area.
Stump
Yup, it is more or less just Quick launch localization :))))
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