Sometimes
in multinational organizations there are people who are more
comfortable with languages other than English. While your content
(documents, list items, and page information) is usually in one
language as a standard, you might want to see the menus—the actions you
can take—in a language that is more familiar to you.
SharePoint has an option
for an administrator to install a “language pack” for different
languages. When this is installed, users can choose what menu language
they want the site to use. For example, an organization based in the
United States may employ a lot of employees who are more comfortable
with Spanish than with English. Allowing those employees to switch the
language of a site’s menus will help those employees be more
productive; they’ll be able to more easily find what they’re looking
for. Because this setting is user-based, it affects only the user in
question, and not other users of the site. This does not change the
content of the page—just menus such as the Site Actions menu and the
menu that opens when the user clicks on the [your name] link. It also changes the commands on the ribbon menu that is displayed
To change a display language, click on the [your name]
link at the top of the page. If the SharePoint administrator installed
a language pack on the server, and the site manager chose to allow
users to select an alternate language, the option Select Display
Language appears, and when you move the mouse on top of it, you see the
available languages for the site (see Figure 1).
When you chose a language,
you see all the menus in that language. Depending on what the site
manager chose, you might also see certain labels, such as the site’s
title and description, in the newly chosen language (see Figure 2).
To switch back to the
original language, you perform these actions again and select your
original language. Notice that each language in the Select Display
Language menu shows up both in the currently selected language and in
that language, so even if you change to a language that uses characters
you don’t understand, reverting to your own language is simple.
