- The document discusses language and multilingual user interface (MUI) support in SharePoint 2016 and Office 365. It covers how user language settings are determined and can be changed, as well as how PointFire software handles language and translations for on-premises and Office 365 environments. It provides a brief demonstration and discusses potential issues with machine translation.

1. Languages, Office 365,
and PointFire 365
MARTIN LAPLANTE
CEO, ICEFIRE STUDIOS, CANADA

2. SUMMARY
• Historical background
• Language & MUI in SharePoint 2016 & O365
• User Language Settings
• PointFire on-prem and PointFire 365
• Brief Demo
• Machine Translation & other topics if time allows

3. Tower of Babel: Quick Recap
• After the great flood destroyed everything, God put a rainbow in the cloud.
• It was the promise of a new relationship.
• Cloud: scary→ reassuring.
• Noah’s descendants wanted to build a tower that would reach the cloud.

4. Genesis 11
A tower, whose top may reach unto heaven
• Because humans are one people with one language, anything that they want to do is
possible.
• But God decided to go down there and confound their language, so they can’t collaborate.
• God scattered them by language upon the face of all the earth.
• The project to reach the cloud was abandoned.

6. 2016/O365 and Languages
• Variations
• Managed Metadata
• MUI (Multilingual User Interface)
• Machine Translation

7. Change Default Language
of an O365 Site Collection?
• MSFT support:
• “If the requirement is strong for your organization, from our back end, we can help change it. However,
we need to delete all site collections and re-create them, which also means all data will be deleted.”
• For My Site, this will also delete every user’s OneDrive for Business documents.
• Ouch! Easier to segregate users by language?
• Your choice: great flood that destroys all, or scatter your users upon the face of all the earth?
• Or you can use PointFire

8. USER LANGUAGE SETTINGS
What Sets User MUI Language?
• 2007: Site’s base language only, no alternate languages
• 2010: Menu toggle sets cookie
• 2013: Browser or user profile.
• O365: It’s complicated

9. 7+ Language Settings
Base language Alt languages
Browser
language
ranked
list
Profile
language
list
Base language Alt languages
O365 Account
language
SP site settings
Browser settings
Add-in site settings
O365 Account
My Profile
O365 Profile
Which one?
First one on the list
that matches base or
alt language.
Mapping: regional
variants
Ignore browser if
this list overlaps
site languages
On change,
changes profile
setting
Make them match ↑

10. Delay in Profile Change

11. Changes Propagate
at Different Rates
English → Spanish → German

12. OneDrive UI Language Behaves Like
SharePoint

13. The Instant Toggle Trick
1. Account setting that has no overlap with base + alt languages
2. Profile setting blank, or no overlap with base + alt languages
3. Go home, come back tomorrow
4. Now change browser settings
• Effect is instantaneous, but training needed

14. PointFire On Premise
• For SharePoint 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016
• Ensures that 2 different users going to the same URL will each see it be entirely in
their own language
• Does not segregate users and content on separate sites
• Solution includes feature, http module, web parts
• Runs on the server, interacts with SharePoint and IIS
• Modifies and filters text on the server
• None of those techniques work in Office 365

15. PointFire 365 v 1.1 functionality
• SharePoint-hosted app
• None of your content goes to our server
• Configures SharePoint MUI & localization
• Shows/hides web parts according to language
• Filters content of lists, libraries, calendars according to language
• User can turn off filtering
• Filters other web parts including search
• Redirects pages according to language
• “Manage Variations” interface to set relationship between pages, items

16. DEMO

17. PF 365 version 2 functionality
• Language toggle
• Slow but steady
• Change date, number, currency formatting with language
• Machine Translation of items & documents
• Translate UI customizations using combination of user-defined translations list and machine
translation
• Better support of Modern Libraries
• More admin & provisioning features

18. MACHINE TRANSLATION
French says: “Buff the sausage”

19. SharePoint’s
Machine Translation Service
• SharePoint Service Application
• Connects to Microsoft Translator
• Similar back end to Bing translation engine
• Custom version for SharePoint users
• Statistical engine, now with deep learning
• On-premise – you can set it up to train with your own documents
• Used in Variations
• Used in Managed Metadata
• Available through API

20. Machine Translation
Has Some Risks

21. Machine Translation Service
is Sometimes Unavailable

22. Check Translations with Context
• ¡Oye! ¿Cómo se escribe “papa” en Inglés?
• “Potato”.
• Gracias.

23. Machine Translation:
Write for Translation
• Microsoft Global English experiment
• Microsoft Manual of Style
• Global English Syntax
• Use short sentences
• Avoid sentence fragments
• Use optional pronouns – that, who
• Use optional articles – the
• Use optional punctuation
• Keep adjectives & adverbs close,
watch “only”
• Machine Translation Syntax
• But not too short
• Present participle vs. gerunds
• Past participles vs adjectives
• Limit coordinate conjunctions – and, or, but
• Capitalize correctly

24. Localizing Add-ins
• Localization vs. Globalization
• Site Language vs. User Language
• At time of creating add-in site, template elements set according to site or user
language
• Stays in that language even when user selects alternative language
• At run-time, change the display using JS file selected according to user UI
language

25. Globalize Add-ins
• SharePoint-hosted or injected branding JS files
• Language-specific “Resources.nn-NN.js” file solutions
• Remote components: Request.QueryString["SPLanguage"]
• Add-in domain has no easy access to user language in host domain (JS XSS security)
• However, if alternate languages match, then user language matches
• Note: add-in domain may not have same alternate languages activated
• {add-in web name} /_layouts/15/muisetng.aspx

26. JS for Globalization
Based on User Language
<script type="text/javascript" src="../scripts/Resources.<SharePoint:EncodedLiteral runat='server'
text='<%$Resources:wss,language_value%>' EncodeMethod='HtmlEncode' />.js"></script>
• Load language-specific JS file Resources.nn-NN.js
• This JS file should contain localized string values
• Replace strings using JS
<h2 id="heading">Bookshop</h2>
<script type="text/javascript"> window.onload = function () {
document.getElementById("heading").innerText = localizedheading;
}
</script>
var localizedheading = "Librería";

27. Localized PnP Provisioning
<pnp:Provisioning xmlns:pnp="http://schemas.dev.office.com/PnP/2015/12/ProvisioningSchema">
<pnp:Preferences Generator="OfficeDevPnP.Core, Version=2.0.1601.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null" />
<pnp:Localizations>
<pnp:Localization LCID="1033" Name="English" ResourceFile="SiteTemplate-en.resx"/>
<pnp:Localization LCID="1043" Name="Dutch" ResourceFile="SiteTemplate-nl.resx"/>
</pnp:Localizations>
• PnP Localization using .resx & tokens, based on Site Language
<pnp:Templates ID="CONTAINER-TEMPLATE-8C075A44E60F4E82B8F013637DB1E654">
<pnp:ProvisioningTemplate ID="TEMPLATE-8C075A44E60F4E82B8F013637DB1E654" Version="1">
<pnp:Lists>
<pnp:ListInstance Title="{resource:myListTitle}" Description="{resource:myListDesc}" DocumentTemplate="" OnQuickLaunch="true"
TemplateType="105" Url="Lists/my" MinorVersionLimit="0" MaxVersionLimit="0" DraftVersionVisibility="0" TemplateFeatureID="00bfea71-7e6d-
4186-9ba8-c047ac750105" EnableFolderCreation="false">
• Token identifiers, all equivalent:
{localization:<key>} , {localize:<key>} , {loc:<key>} , {resource:<key>}, {res:<key>}.

28. More questions?
Martin.Laplante@icefire.ca
Thank You For Coming To aOS