To compete in today’s globalized marketplace for products and services, businesses need to ensure their web sites support multiple languages. The majority of the Internet’s content is in English and as a result, it is also one of the most competitive languages to market in. There are other huge markets to be targeted that are much less saturated and provide more cost-effective marketing opportunities. Potential customers in different markets appreciate businesses that make the effort to provide them information about products and services in their native language. Many users become disengaged with sites that do not facilitate access through their local languages. A company’s web site can demonstrate the company’s maturity and show customers the company is capable of conducting business in multiple languages. The need for multilingual web sites is growing. More companies are making the investment to make their web sites multilingual, which has produced measurable improvements in company sales and customer satisfaction. In this chapter, we build our own multilingual sites using the Variations and Translation Services features in SharePoint 2013.

Multilingual Support

When we create an Internet site, it’s important to note that the instant we publish a page onto the World Wide Web, it becomes global. We need to ensure the site is flexible and adaptable to international requirements. The process is less painful if we plan for multilingual support from the start, before the site first launches. Adapting the site content for international users requires a two-step process: localization and optimization.

The localization aspect requires a professionally qualified native-speaking translator for each of the target languages. The translation of the site is made easier if we use minimal rich media content, as it’s difficult to edit, copy, and perform word counts, processes that are crucial to translation.

To optimize the site for international users, we shouldn’t translate our keywords and phrases directly from our English language site. People might use abbreviations, acronyms, or synonyms to search for products and services locally. We should instead research key terms users use to search for items in their respective markets. We can then incorporate these keywords and phrases into our professionally translated site. We should always keep search engine optimization (SEO) in mind when building modern Internet sites. Having the site content in different languages allows for different versions of keyword targeting and a better chance of attracting more users through search engines.

Most browsers today detect localization of the user, which allows web sites to dynamically display content in the targeted language. In some cases, we might want to consider creating an entrance page or a menu to allow users to choose a navigation language for the site.

Multilingual Enhancements in SharePoint 2013

Microsoft has made several enhancements in multilingual functionality since SharePoint 2010. Things are much faster, repeatable, and manageable.

Before we dive into specific multilingual features in the following sections, let’s compare the new features in SharePoint 2013 with how things worked in SharePoint 2010. Using features from its predecessors, SharePoint 2013 is still using the Labels and Variations features for translation. The Variations feature has been available since SharePoint 2007. Although variations underwent technical changes in the last few iterations of the product, the concept remains unchanged in SharePoint 2013. When we do translation exports from one site to another variation site, the export packages are much smaller compared to a single big job in SharePoint 2010. Unlike the exported CAB package generated by SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2013 is now using the industry-standard XLIFF file format to export content for translation to a third-party translation service and to import the content back to SharePoint after it has been translated. SharePoint now relies on timer jobs that run a queue or a replication list. As the queue gets processed, items in the queue get marked as replicated. If we need to stop or pause the replication process for any reason, as soon as the process restarts again, it will go back to the queue or the replication list and continue to process where it left off. This process enables us to publish more than one label at a time.

New in SharePoint 2013, a publishing page’s metadata emits the page’s language for search engines at the time it performs the indexing. Another new feature is the machine-based translation via the Bing Translation service. This allows the content to be automatically translated in the cloud. Before SharePoint 2013, lists and libraries that did not have content pages did not automatically have the content replicated and we did not have the option to enable replication unless the content was referenced from within a page that was replicated. Now in SharePoint 2013, we can replicate a list or library and translate it from one label to another.

Along with the cross-site publishing feature, host header site collections, and managed navigation features, we now have the ability to have multilingual-friendly URLs. We can export content for translation to a third-party translation service by using the industry-standard XLIFF file format and import the content back to SharePoint after it has been translated. This can be done on an entire label, one page, navigation, or selected items. Instead of pushing the updated content, label owners are notified of changes and can pull content on demand.

Planning for Multilingual Sites

Multilingual sites support users in different regions who speak different languages to access the content of the site. We can use SharePoint 2013 variations features to create multilingual sites to make it easy to track site content updates and changes. Before we start the implementation, we need to determine the languages and locales requirements of our site to plan for which language features and components to install and configure on our servers.

Deploying Language Packs

Language packs are required to enable multilingual support in SharePoint without requiring separate installations. We must install language packs, which contain language-specific site templates, on all web and application servers.

Each language has a unique language identifier (language ID), which is used by all SharePoint components to determine the language to display and how to interpret content that is put on the site.

Installing Language Packs on the Web and Application Servers

In our server farm environment, we need to install the German language pack to all the SharePoint web front-end and application servers. We need to log in to each server with an account that is a server administrator on the servers as well as a security administrator in SQL. Then we run setup.exe for the language pack. When prompted with the Microsoft Software License Terms page, select the I accept the terms of this agreement check box. Then click Continue. The Setup Wizard installs the language pack.

After the installation is completed, run the SharePoint products configuration wizard to ensure the language pack is installed and configured successfully for SharePoint.

After running psconfig, make sure to deactivate and reactivate any language-specific features before using the new language pack.

After the language pack is installed, the language-specific site templates are added to the following directory:

%COMMONPROGRAMFILES%Microsoft SharedWeb server extensions15TEMPLATELanguageID

In our case, after installing the German language pack, all site templates are in the following directory:

%COMMONPROGRAMFILES%Microsoft SharedWeb server extensions15TEMPLATE1031

The 1031 folder is the language ID for German (Germany). At this point, Specter Group site owners and SharePoint administrators can create sites and site collections based on the German-language site templates by selecting German from the Select a language drop-down list (see Figure 14-4).

Creating Variation Hierarchy

To support multilingual, we need to first define a source language with its hierarchy and for every language (label) that we create to mirror the content. With this design, we have a single site collection with a hierarchy of webs for every language.

For the Specter Group News site, we need to create a publishing site collection, /sites/news, as our authoring site collection for all news content. First we need to configure Variation settings on our authoring site collection.

From /sites/news Site Settings, under Site Collection Administration, click Variations Settings to open the screen shown in Figure 14-6.

For the Site, List, and Page Creation Behavior setting, selecting the Create Everywhere option will allow the content on the source variation site to be automatically created on all the target variation sites. If the Create Selectively option is selected, then the content author needs to manually select the target variation site to publish each time.

To create the variation hierarchy, we need to create variation labels. First, we create a root variation label (en-us) and then we create a target variation label (de-de).

1. Navigate to Site Settings and click Variation Labels, which opens the screen shown in Figure 14-7.

   

   Figure 14-7. From Site Settings, click Variation Labels to create variation labels and hierarchies

2. Click the New Label link to create a label. For the first label, the Create Variation Label page will be presented to configure the root label (see Figure 14-8).

   

   Figure 14-8. Create source label first before creating all other target labels

3. Because our root label is en-us, we need to select English from the Language drop-down list.
4. Select English (United States) for the Locale setting.
5. For the Variations Home setting, we want to enter / to make sure the root site, /sites/news/, is the home site for all variation features.
6. For Label Name and Description settings, ensure we have en-us as our root label. Leave all other settings as the defaults.
7. Click Create to complete. Navigate back to the Variation Labels page and you should see the new “en-us” label created (see Figure 14-9).

   

   Figure 14-9. From the Variation Labels page, view all the labels and hierarchies created

8. To create the target German variation label, click the New Label link.
9. From the Configure Your Target Label page shown in Figure 14-10, choose German from the Language drop-down list.

   

   Figure 14-10. Create a target label by specifying a language and locale

10. Select German (Germany) from the Locale drop-down list.
11. On the Name Your Target Label page shown in Figure 14-11, ensure the label name is de-de.

    

    Figure 14-11. Specify a name and what content to propagate for the new target label

12. For Hierarchy Creation, select the type of content the target site wants to propagate from the source site. In our case, we want to propagate everything from source site to target site.
13. While creating these variation labels, we can configure how translation needs to happen. For the purpose of showing manual and machine translation, we allow both human and machine translation (see Figure 14-12).

    

    Figure 14-12. For the new target label, specify the method of translation to enable

14. We also need to configure target label behavior to ensure page changes are propagated from the source to the target sites. For Page Update Behavior, we need to specify whether we want to automatically push updates from the source page to the target site as a draft version or we need a target site contributor to review the change before syncing the current source version to the target as a draft version. In our case, we want to have SharePoint automatically push the update to the target (see Figure 14-13).

    

    Figure 14-13. Specify how updates should be propagated for the new target label

15. Navigate back to the Variation Labels page. You should see both the new en-us label and the new de-de label created (see Figure 14-14). Notice in some cases, the new target label is not hyperlinked and the Hierarchy Is Created column has a value of No.

    

    Figure 14-14. View the new target label after it has been created

     Note   At this point, if the target label is not hyperlinked and the Hierarchy Is Created column has a value of No, then we need to complete two steps to ensure the hierarchy and the label subsites are created successfully. First, to ensure a subsite is created for each target label, we need to click the Create Hierarchies link on the Variation Labels page. View all site content to make sure a subsite has been created for the new target label. Then, to ensure the Hierarchy is created, the Variations Create Hierarchies Job Definition timer job needs to run successfully.

16. To ensure the Variations Create Hierarchies timer job is running, go to Central Administration. Click Monitoring in the left navigation menu. Then click Check job status to find the Variations Create Hierarchies Job Definition timer job to ensure the job ran (see Figure 14-15).

    

    Figure 14-15. View timer job status for all variation-related jobs

17. If the job did not run, we can go to Central Admin to trigger the job manually to run now. Click Job Definitions on the left navigation menu. Find and click the Variations Create Hierarchies Job Definition timer job. From Edit Timer Job, click Run Now button to trigger the job to run immediately (see Figure 14-16).

    

    Figure 14-16. Edit a timer job to run the job immediately

18. After the job is completed, navigate back to the Variation Labels page, as shown in Figure 14-17. You should see the new en-us label and the new de-de label created and the Hierarchy is Created column has the value of Yes for all the labels.

    

    Figure 14-17. View the new target label along with the navigation URL of the subsite and the status of the creation of the hierarchy

19. To ensure each label has a subsite, click Site Contents on the left navigation menu, which opens the screen shown in Figure 14-18.

    

    Figure 14-18. View All site content to view subsites created for each label

20. By default, when users navigate to the variation root site (/sites/news), they are redirected to the appropriate top site of a variation label based on the language setting of their web browser. As soon as variation is enabled for a site collection, a new redirect page, VariationRoot.aspx, is added to the root site’s Pages library (see Figure 14-19).

    

    Figure 14-19. After variation labels are created, the VariationRoot page is created for redirecting users to the top site of a variation label based on the language setting of the user's browser

21. From the variation root site’s Site Settings, click Welcome Page link. The Welcome page is set to the VariationRoot.aspx page, which redirects the user to the appropriate top site of a variation label based on the user’s browser language setting.
22. It is possible to change this behavior by updating the VariationRoot redirection page with a custom page that redirects the user based on other criteria. To test the default behavior, change the browser setting to German language. For Internet Explorer, from Internet Options, click Languages.
23. At the Language Preference prompt, add the German (Germany) language we want to use. Once the language is added, promote the language to the top so that the browser will use German first, as shown in Figure 14-20.

    

    Figure 14-20. Configure the language setting in Internet Explorer

24. Close all the browsers and relaunch the /sites/news site. You should be redirected to the /sites/news/de-de welcome page (see Figure 14-21).

    

    Figure 14-21. Users will be redirected to the home page of the variation site matching their language settings

Setting Up Translation

SharePoint 2013 introduces Translation Services. Using Translation Services, we can choose to have the content translated automatically by machine translation or we can use manual translation using XLIFF translation packages to export the content from SharePoint and have the content translated by a translation agency. Machine translation is fast and reduces costs, but artificial intelligence today still lacks the ability to ensure the meaning of the content is preserved. To ensure the quality of the translation and to save time, it makes sense to use a translation agency to manually translate the content.

Summary

Today, many companies operate globally. Even when dealing with home markets, companies often need to appeal to customers who speak different languages. To attract visitors and potential customers, companies need to make the effort to provide users with information about products and services in their native language. More companies are making the investment to make their web sites multilingual, which has produced measurable improvements in company sales and customer satisfaction. Providing multilingual support for a public web site is one of the most important decisions when planning for a new web site. Using the new translation and publishing capabilities provided by SharePoint 2013, we were able to build a multilingual web site using the standard functionalities.