Localizing SharePoint 2010

Everybody talks about the new multilingual functionalities in SharePoint 2010. Because we are located in Belgium I really needed to try it out.

SP2010 Enterprise UK version installed as a default and now we just want to add the Dutch and French language. According the manuals this should be a piece of cake. Download the language packs you need from the Microsoft website and start installing. If you don’t understand the text that’s normal, I started with the Dutch Language Pack

Nothing fancy just keep your eye at the installer and click next when asked. When finished the necessary services will be stopped and started and that’s it.

Now we need to activate the extra language on our SharePoint site. So go  to Site Settings, Site Administration, Language Settings and check the newly installed language, in this case Dutch.

As we were so confident with the Dutch installation we started immediately with the French Language Pack. Following the same steps as previously everything installed as it should be. And yes in Site Administration we now can activate the French Language. So we opened our English site, switched to Dutch and then to French and guess what.

Yes, all we get is a big French error (translated just fine).

And just out of curiosity we installed the German Language Pack. And yes, that works just fine. So now it’s up to the debugging stuff…