Terminalworks Blog | Configuration of Multi-Lingual SharePoint Sites

From my previous posts I have described on SharePoint Overview and SharePoint Search, from this article I’m going to explain on how implement and configure a Multi-Lingual SharePoint site. When we need to display our SharePoint portal with different languages we can enable site variations that is an in-built feature comes with SharePoint. For that first we need to identify necessary languages for the proposed SharePoint site. In this case I will configure Arabic language along with English.

Downloading and installing the Language pack

Download the Arabic Language Pack for SharePoint.
Install language pack on application servers + web front end servers.
You can verify whether the relevant LANGUAGE PACKS are installed via central administration.
In central administration àManage Patch Status under “Upgrade and Migration” section

Create a new label in site settings (5 Step Wizard)

Select the relevant site collection and, Site Settings -Variation Labels, You can see the current labels (in this case, English), Change it to Arabic and create a new label. Then you have to follow the wizard which have 5 steps to configure.

Select the necessary language. You will get a drop down with the available languages. Then you have to pick a LOCALE also for the required Language.
Next you have to assign a NAME to LABEL. It will append to the URL (here http://spsvr:ar-sa) There we have to specify “Display Name” and “Hierarchy Creation”. We can choose,
Publishing sites, List and pages OR
Publishing pages OR
Root site only
In step 3, you have to specify how we can set whether users to translate the whole SharePoint site. Machine translation is also possible if “Machine Translation Service” is running on servers.
You can check it via Central Administration - Services on Server
Then in the 4^th step, which is the CONTENT changing mechanism and Page Update behavior. There we can set either,
User can manually sync update
Automatically update sites using SharePoint timer jobs
After all, steps we can verify all the settings in the Steps 5. Then Finish the wizard.

Verify variation settings

Following site variations can be verified using Site settings - Variation Labels as “ar-sa”

In Site settings - Variation Logs, we can see important messages. That is about SharePoint timer jobs.

So it is better to go and check newly created SharePoint timer jobs, it is called “Variations Create Hierarchies Job definition” and it will do the content translation.
Wait for a while till SharePoint timer jobs do the backend work. That will create of new SITES for new Multi-linguals. In this scenario we can see newly create Sub-Site called “Arabic (Saudi Arabia)” under root site collection.
When you go to the site you can see Pages are created and waiting for PUBLISH.
Next you have to Approve Page to view by the normal users.
Then you can navigate to language SITE that you want.
Click the RIBBON and check the content.
You can also take necessary actions within the site with ARABIC language.

It is a cool feature that comes with SharePoint to enable MULTI-LINGUAL sites. Hope this post is useful

Thanks

Configuration of Multi-Lingual SharePoint Sites

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