Language packs enables Administrators of sites and site collections to create sites and site collections using different languages other than the install language. The language packs needs to be installed on all the web front-end servers in a farm. My suggestion would be to install the language packs on all the servers on the farm. So that if you need to convert an application server into a web front end server, you can do it with minimum effort.
Language packs are available for the following languages:
· Arabic
· Bulgarian
· Catalan
· Chinese (Simplified)
· Chinese (Traditional)
· Croatian
· Czech
· Danish
· Dutch
· English
· Estonian
· Finnish
· French
· German
· Greek
· Hebrew
· Hindi
· Hungarian
· Italian
· Japanese
· Korean
· Latvian
· Lithuanian
· Norwegian (Bokmål)
· Polish
· Portuguese (Brazil)
· Portuguese (Portugal)
· Romanian
· Russian
· Serbian (Latin)
· Slovak
· Slovenian
· Spanish
· Swedish
· Thai
· Turkish
· Ukrainian
Before you install language packs on your front-end Web servers, you must do the following:
· Install the necessary language files on your front-end Web servers.
· Install Office SharePoint Server 2007 on each of your front-end Web servers.
· Run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard on each of your front-end Web servers.
Most language files are installed by default on the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system. However, you must install supplemental language files for East Asian languages and languages that use complex script or require right-to-left orientations. Below are the steps to install the supplemental language support.
Installing Supplemental language support
Supplemental language support for complex script and right-to-left languages needs to be installed if you are installing the language pack for the following languages:
· Arabic
· Armenian
· Georgian
· Hebrew
· Indic
· Thai
· Vietnamese
Supplemental language support for East Asian languages needs to be installed if you are installing the language pack for the following languages:
· Chinese
· Japanese
· Korean
Following are the procedures to install supplemental language support on Windows 2003 server for
· Complex script and right-to-left languages
· East Asian languages
1. Go to Control Panel from the Start menu
2. Double click on Regional and Language Options in the control panel
3. Select the Languages tab in the Regional and Language Options window
4. Under Supplemental language support, Select the appropriate check boxes against :
· Install files for complex script and right-to-left languages
· Install files for East Asian languages
5. Click the OK button.
You will be prompted to insert the Windows 2003 install CD.
After installing the files, restart the server when prompted.
Downloading and installing the language pack
You download the language packs using the following URLs
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=318D8562-58BD-4329-B1F6-F1941A38BC7F&displaylang=en (SharePoint Server 2007 x64 bit)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=2447426b-8689-4768-bff0-cbb511599a45&displaylang=en&tm (SharePoint Server 2007 x32 bit)
In the download page select the appropriate language from the drop-down and click on the change button. After the page refreshes, click on the Download button to get the language pack.
Once the download is complete use a tool like ISOBuster to extract the contents. Once extracted, click on setup.exe to install the language pack after accepting the license agreement.
After completing the language pack setup you must rerun the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration wizard using the default settings. If you do not run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard after you install a language pack, the language pack will not be installed properly.
Once the download is complete use a tool like ISOBuster to extract the contents. Once extracted, click on setup.exe to install the language pack after accepting the license agreement.After completing the language pack setup you must rerun the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration wizard using the default settings. If you do not run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard after you install a language pack, the language pack will not be installed properly.
Creating a Site collection using the installed language pack
1. In Central Administration click on Create Site Collection link in the Application Management tab.In the create site collection page go to Template Selection section and select a language from the drop-down.
3. Once you select the language, the template names and description in the Template selection section will be displayed in the selected language. Select the template to use for the site collection and click ok.
4. The new site collection will be rendered using the selected language.
