Multilingual User Interface ❘ 51 List Templates Lists and libraries can also be saved as templates in exactly the same manner as site templates. From the List Settings page, click the Save as Template link to begin the save process. Just like saving a site template, you can give the template file a filename, a display name, and a description. You can also choose to include the list content, but lists do not retain security settings, so consider that before making any sensitive information available as a template to everyone. The only difference between the site template and the list template is that list templates are stored in the List Template Gallery instead of the Solution Gallery. They are, however, solution files that can be reused. When creating a list from a custom list template, look for your custom templates in the Blank & Custom category on the left side of the Create window. MULTILINGUAL USER INTERFACE Many multinational companies with offices spread across the globe may need to deploy SharePoint 2010 in the local language of each branch. Fortunately, SharePoint 2010 offers an easy way for admin- istrators to install language packs for various languages on the server farm, enabling the creation of new sites in a local language, and the interface of existing sites to be translated into the languages installed on the server. Installation and Configuration of SharePoint 2010 Language Packs Installing language packs is a fairly straightforward process. Both SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 have language packs available to install. SharePoint Foundation 2010 only needs the SharePoint Foundation language packs, but if you are running the full license of SharePoint Server 2010, you need to install both the SharePoint Foundation and the SharePoint Server language packs. Language packs for SharePoint 2010 can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads. When downloading the language packs, you should create a unique folder for each, or at least pro- vide a unique name, as the names of the SharePoint Foundation language packs all share the same filename, meaning it’s possible that downloading one language pack can overwrite files of another. Every front-end web server will need a language pack installed for every language you want to use. To begin the installation, first launch the SharePoint Foundation language pack for the selected language. When you launch the language pack’s installation file, you’ll be presented with a license agreement. The installation interface is written in the language of the language pack you are install- ing, which may look confusing at first. However, the installation process uses a standard Windows interface. Check the box below the user agreement and click the Next button (keeping in mind that “Next” is written in the language pack’s local language). The language pack will install. Figure 2-28 shows the installation of a French language pack. 52 ❘ CHAPTER 2 the NeW aNd imProved User exPerieNce FIGURE 228 When the installation finishes, you are prompted to run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard. If you are only running SharePoint 2010 Foundation, you can click the Finish button to launch the wizard. However, if you need to install a SharePoint Server 2010 Language Pack, you do not need to run the configuration wizard until after the other language pack has been installed. In addition, if you are installing multiple language packs, you do not need to run the configuration wizard after each language pack installation, only after all the language packs have been installed. This can help mitigate downtime when installing language packs in a production environment. If you are running SharePoint Server 2010, install the SharePoint Server 2010 Language Pack. The installation process is identical to the Foundation language pack installation. After you have finished installing the last language pack, you can leave the box checked to automatically launch the configuration wizard, or you can manually start the configuration wizard by clicking Start ➪ All Programs ➪ Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products ➪ SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard. For more information about using the configuration wizard, see Chapter 3. After the configuration wizard is complete, you will have successfully installed and configured a lan- guage pack to use the Multilingual User Interface. Using the Multilingual User Interface Once your language packs have been installed, you can take advantage of the Multilingual User Interface (MUI). Before you can change the display language of an existing site, the newly installed Multilingual User Interface ❘ 53 language needs to be enabled. This is done on a per-site basis. From the Site Settings page, select Site Administration ➪ Language Settings. On this page, you will see the default language of the site and any alternate languages that have been installed. Check the box next to the languages you wish to make available on the site collection. Below the Alternate language section, you are presented with the option to overwrite existing translations, as shown in Figure 2-29. FIGURE 229 By default, some SharePoint content is translated into other languages when chosen. For example, some default SharePoint column headings are automatically translated into a selected language, such as the Title column that appears in virtually all SharePoint lists by default. When this option is set to No, you can make changes to the default SharePoint column headers in the default language with- out affecting any translations made to the column header. If you set the setting to Yes and change the name of the column in the default language, your change will overwrite any translations that may already be in place and display the default language even if an alternate language is selected. Interface Translation Once you turn on alternate languages, you can change the language of the SharePoint interface. Click your name in the upper right corner of the screen, hover over Display Language, and choose which language you’d like the site translated into. The Ribbon, Site Actions Menu, Site Settings menu, and other SharePoint components will be translated into the selected language, as shown in Figure 2-30. SharePoint will not translate any custom content on the page into the language chosen. Another thing you will notice is that the navigation may be displayed by its URL instead of by its name, or it may not be translated. SharePoint does not translate the site titles automatically. 54 ❘ CHAPTER 2 the NeW aNd imProved User exPerieNce FIGURE 230 Navigation Translation You can set up custom-translated navigation using the MUI. It doesn’t matter if SharePoint has cre- ated your navigation automatically based on your site structure or you have created the entire site’s navigation manually — either way, you can create multilingual navigation. One thing to keep in mind with multilingual navigation is that the translation is not done automatically for you. Setting up navigation translation is done manually. Although this can be a time-consuming process, it will likely produce a more accurate translation than a machine translation would. Until the navigation translation is set up, when you switch display languages, your navigation items will be displayed in the site’s default display language until additional languages have been enabled for a site. Consider the following scenario: A portal site’s default language is English, and a subsite is created that has German set as the default language. The English portal will only display the title given to the German site in its navigation until English is enabled as an alternate language on the German site. Then, an alternate site name translation could be provided in English for the German site, and the English translation would then appear in the English site’s navigation. To create translations for the languages in the navigation, you have a couple of options, depending on how the navigation is set up. If SharePoint has built the navigation automatically by displaying the current site’s children sites, navigate to a subsite. Because SharePoint is pulling the navigation Multilingual User Interface ❘ 55 information from the subsites, you need to make the changes at that subsite level. Open the Site Settings page and click the Title, Description, and Icon link. Then, change the language. In the Title field, type your translated title. You aren’t overwriting the default language title here, but simply creat- ing an alternate title to display when the new language is selected. You can also enter a translated description if you wish. Click the OK button to save the changes. Now, when you return to the par- ent site and change the language, your navigation will also change to show the translated site title (see Figure 2-31). FIGURE 231 If you have links in your navigation that were created manually, you can use a similar process. Instead of heading to a site to make the changes, you can enter translations for navigation links and headers from the Modify Navigation page, which can be accessed from the Site Actions menu. Once you open this page, you can change languages. Select the navigation link you would like to change, and click the Modify link in the navigation toolbox (it will be translated, so it’s good to be familiar with the link’s location in the default language). You can replace the default text with your trans- lated text, and then click OK to save your alternate navigation text. Changing the display language also changes your manually created links to the alternate language. These techniques work for both the top navigation links and Quick Launch links. Many items in the Quick Launch, such as the headings for the different list type categories, the Recycle Bin link, and the View All Site Content link, are automatically translated into the selected language. Any cus- tom lists that show on the Quick Launch menu are not automatically translated, but you can easily change this using the methods just described. You will also learn how to translate list titles in the next section. List Translation Lists can also have some translation applied to the title, description, and column headers. Translation can’t be done on individual list items, however. Column titles that are pre-built into a list are auto- matically translated into the selected language. Custom columns are not automatically translated. You can, however, manually translate the column titles and descriptions for custom columns. The 56 ❘ CHAPTER 2 the NeW aNd imProved User exPerieNce process for translating list names, descriptions, and column headers is fairly similar to the process of translating navigation. The easiest way to translate a list title is to open the list in its default language and open the List Settings screen. Then, click the “Title, description and navigation link.” On this screen, switch to the desired language and type your translated title and description, and click OK. You can repeat this process for as many languages as needed. You may notice that, depending on the navigation set- tings for your site, the name of the list didn’t change in the Quick Launch menu. If this is the case, you can adjust the translation manually as outlined in the previous section. Changing a column header translation is done on the Column Property screen. The List Settings page contains a section that lists all the columns in the list. Click one of the column names to open its properties. On the properties page, you can change the language, enter a translation for the col- umn name and description, and click OK to translate the column header. Generally, individual list items cannot be translated. However, if your list contains a Managed Metadata column type, you can take advantage of the Managed Metadata’s ability to store trans- lated labels for each term. In Central Administration, you can open the Managed Metadata Service Application(s) that serve content to the rest of the site. (See Chapter 7 for more about the service application architecture, and Chapter 16 to learn about the Managed Metadata service application.) In each term group, you can open a term and provide a default value for each language installed on the server. For instance, if you have the term “elephant,” you can also add the translated Spanish term “elefante” and the German term “Elefant.” SharePoint will realize that both of these translated terms are synonymous with the English term “elephant.” Multilingual Site Creation In addition to being able to change the language of the interface and navigation, you can also set a site’s default language during the site creation process. Any new site can be built with any of the installed lan- guages as its default language, not just the default language of the SharePoint installation. For example, the default language of the root site may be English, but suppose a company has a French-speaking branch. Their portal homepage can be built to have a default language of French, so its interface and the menus are all written in French. A Spanish-speaking branch’s portal home page can be created with Spanish as the default language. Not only will the interface display in the chosen default language, any text automatically generated by SharePoint (such as the Welcome message that displays when a Team site is created) will also display in the chosen default language. Figure 2-32 shows a subsite created with German set as the default language. All menus will display in this language as well. Regardless of the default language, you can still have SharePoint translate its interface by selecting a new language. Creating a site with the MUI is the same as creating a site normally. The only difference is that you have the capability to select the default language from the Select Language drop-down in the Create pop-up during the site creation process. The rest of the process is identical. Keep in mind, though, that new sites are not automatically configured to allow language translation. You need to enable other languages to be displayed from the Site Actions menu before you can translate your newly cre- ated site into another language from its default. Multilingual User Interface ❘ 57 FIGURE 232 Exporting and Importing Translations A nice feature of the SharePoint 2010 MUI is the capability to export and import translation resource files. These resource files are XML files that contain references to items that can be translated. By translating the values in this file, an administrator can quickly provide translations of many compo- nents of the site in a relatively short amount of time without having to open every site, navigation item, list, and column. On the Site Settings screen for a site, in the Site Administration section, there is a link to Export translations. On the Export Translations screen, you can choose which language(s) to export into files. The next section of the screen, Export Text, enables you to choose whether to export all items that can be translated or just the items that have not been translated yet. The translation resource files can be edited in just about any program that can open an XML file (even Notepad). This sec- tion doesn’t get into the details of editing this XML file, but generally speaking, anything toward the bottom section of the file in a <value> node can be translated. Replace the text in the <value> nodes with the translated text. When the changes have been made to the file, you can save it and import the translations into the site. Importing the file into the site is also done from the Site Settings screen. Under the Site Administration heading, click Import Translations. You can browse the computer for the translation resource file and select the language to which the translations should be applied. Click the Import button, and you have added additional translation to the site, without having to open every page and manually add translations. 58 ❘ CHAPTER 2 the NeW aNd imProved User exPerieNce SUMMARY We hope that this chapter has given you some good insight into what has changed in the SharePoint 2010 user experience. Using SharePoint is now more like using the Office client programs than in any previous version, which should make editing and working with SharePoint pages a less daunting task for users. The addition of the Ribbon to the SharePoint interface has made working with nearly every aspect of SharePoint 2010 a different experience from what many users may be used to, but it has put more options for working with pages, lists, and libraries right in front of the user. Creating columns and views in lists is all done with the help of the Ribbon. Editing pages also relies on the Ribbon now in order to make changes to text and add Web Parts to the page. The Live Preview mode now built into SharePoint gives users a good way to check how changes look before committing to them. Custom site templates provide administrators with a quick way to create new sites with preconfigured settings, which can be transferred to other SharePoint sites because site templates are built as solution files now. Finally, the Multilingual User Interface of SharePoint 2010 has been updated, enabling you to provide alternate translations for many items that appear in the SharePoint interface. Site navigation, site titles and descriptions, column headers in lists, and list names and descriptions can all have alternate translations based on the available language packs. You can even create sites with different default languages. As you can see, there is a lot going on in SharePoint 2010! . and Configuration of SharePoint 2010 Language Packs Installing language packs is a fairly straightforward process. Both SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 have language packs. install. SharePoint Foundation 2010 only needs the SharePoint Foundation language packs, but if you are running the full license of SharePoint Server 2010, you need to install both the SharePoint. companies with offices spread across the globe may need to deploy SharePoint 2010 in the local language of each branch. Fortunately, SharePoint 2010 offers an easy way for admin- istrators to install