Part of any SharePoint Server deployment instance is understanding the intended target audience. SharePoint Server supports some level of localization. Localization is the concept of SharePoint displaying content in a different language than it may have been created in. Multilingual features enable users to see sites in their preferred languages.
SharePoint Server supports two core types of localization:
- Multilingual user interface
- Variations
In the next two sections, we'll explore the features and use cases for both of them.
Multiple Language User Interface
With the Multiple Language User Interface (also referred to as the Multilingual User Interface or MUI), you can configure SharePoint Server to display interface elements in a user's preferred language. MUI configurations affect the elements that are used to manipulate and interact with SharePoint, such as navigation items. When using the MUI, you can display the following user interface elements in different languages:
- Default columns
- Navigation bar links
- SharePoint default menus and actions
- Custom columns for a list or site
- The site title and description
- The Managed Metadata services
When planning to use MUI features, you'll need to understand the languages that your users commonly use. MUI features require the installation of language packs for the languages that you want to use.
MUI features are configured at the site level. To change them, follow these steps:
- As a site collection owner or administrator, navigate to the site where you wish to enable multiple language support.
- Click Settings | Site Settings. Depending on whether the site is on the modern or classic version or has been customized, you may need to select Site Information | View all site settings on the Site settings fly-out menu.
- On the settings page, under the Site Administration section, click Language Settings.
- Select the checkboxes for the languages you want to make available.
- Click Yes under Overwrite Translations if you want to overwrite translations in the site interface when changes are made to the default site interface. If other administrators make changes in alternative language versions of the page (such as updating the translated text for a navigation item), selecting Yes on this setting will cause the changes made in the default interface to overwrite the customized changes in an alternative language interface.
- Click OK.
It's important to note that while navigational items or list columns will be translated, the content will not.
Variations
While the MUI is used to translate navigational and interface elements, variations can be used to actually translate content. This can be useful if you have content that needs to be replicated in several languages. Variations require sites to be built with the Publishing Site templates, which includes workflows and timer jobs to update pages.
Variations rely on the configuration of several elements:
- Variation root site: The root site provides the URL for the variation sites. It hosts the landing page that will redirect users to the correct site.
- Variation labels: An identifier for a variation. Each unique variation needs to have its own variation label defined.
- Variation sites: Sites that are created and managed based on the variation labels.
- Source variation sites: Denotes sites where content is authored, curated, and published. A source variation site's content is synchronized with the target variation sites. A site collection can only host one source variation site.
- Target variation sites: Denotes sites that receive synchronized copies of content from source variation sites. Target variation sites can also host new, unique content (though that content is not synchronized to other sites).
- Variations hierarchy: A complete set of sites with all variation labels.
- Variation lists: Lists for which you identify target variation labels to receive list items.
- Variation pages: Publishing pages stored in the Pages library of the source and target variation sites.
When planning a variations-based deployment, there are several important things to consider:
- Content approval: As previously noted, the use of variations requires SharePoint Server Publishing Site templates. In order for new content to be synchronized and made available on target variation sites, it must be approved by the source variation site administrator(s) or member(s) with approval permissions. As content is only visible once it has been approved, part of the planning process needs to focus on who is responsible for both creating and approving content to be pushed to sites that will have variations. Variations and content approval require major and minor versioning enabled in the source and target variation sites.
- Content deployment: Content deployment jobs are used to copy content from one site collection to another. If you plan on using content deployment jobs to sync content into a source variations site, you need to ensure that the content deployment job schedule doesn't overlap with the Variations Create Hierarchies Job Definition job. If they execute at the same time, you risk inconsistent site data being synchronized from the source to target variation sites.
- Cross-site publishing: Cross-site publishing is a feature that allows content from one site to be shown in another site's search results. The source (or authoring) site collections are used to author and contain content and then a publishing site is used to control the design and show the content. The authoring sites contain catalogs (content that is tagged with various metadata). The publishing site collection uses Search web parts to display cataloged content based on the filters the site author selects. There are three core scenarios for cross-site publishing in variations or multilingual sites, each of which has their own architectural and planning guidance (see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/administration/plan-variations-for-multilingual-cross-site-publishing-site for more detailed deployment and configuration information):
- Maintaining multilingual content outside of SharePoint
- Only publishing multilingual content, or publishing a mix of catalog- and non-catalog-based content, without variations on the non-catalog content
- Publishing a mix of catalog and non-catalog content with variations on all content
- Site navigation: Like cross-site publishing, site navigation in variations-based sites has additional planning requirements. Site navigation is automatically generated and displayed in the Global Navigation and Current Navigation menus of a web page. Depending on your layout, this may or may not be a desirable feature.
- Web parts: Web parts are used to display content on SharePoint pages. Web parts are synced by default as part of the variations configuration. Depending on the type of content displayed in a web part, it may be desirable to disable web part updates to target variations sites.
Regardless of the translation mechanisms that are used, it's important to determine what languages your users need and what mechanisms you will use (manually creating and updating content, MUI items, and custom or third-party translation services).
Localization settings will help you tailor your content to the language needs of your individual users. In the next section, we'll talk about how and where to store the content and applications themselves—in SharePoint Server content farms.
