<Disclaimer>This is personal notes of what I retained during the session. This can be incomplete, partially right or wrong. It is just part of the notes I took and what retained my attention. Nothing prevents the user to get more information on their favorite web site.</Disclaimer>

MUI offers the possibility to add languages to a site. It is based on the language packs and users are directed to the correct language based on the browser language. Variations is more used for internet facing SharePoint sites.

If a user’s preferred language is not support on the SharePoint site, it will fall back to the site primary language one. The site’s default language can’t be changed afterwards, once it is created. Then, for that site, additional languages can be supported and selected in the Site Settings page.

As rule, everything should be localizable

As long as the language pack is installed, it will be supported by the ASP.NET controls. Wiki page does not support MUI.

Search box, control menu, ribbon supports MUI. List titles, field titles navigation are MUI by default but customizable. Site Actions is designed customizable. All the end user content is not MUI. When renaming a list in a language, for example, it will not be changed in the other languages. It is possible to import/export the site’s text into a resx file.

4 types of resources : Pages, Server-side assemblies, Script & Files, XML Files.

Resx files are deployed as module into App_GlobalResources or into 14\CONFIG\Resources. The last folder is the source for all the new web applications that will be created afterwards.

Server-Side assemblies are deployed in the App_GlobalResources folder for resx files

For scripts and resources, use the language directories (1033). All strings should be in a single file.

XML files are deployed to 14\Resources and use the resourcefilename.culture.resx naming convention for global resources.

To deploy the resources, one solution is to use a global .wsp.  But there is also the notion of language packs. A language pack shares the same wsp IDs.

In sandbox solutions, pages’ resx files and global XML resources cannot be used or even deployed. Therefore, the strategy would be to have a per-language copies of the pages and move the logic to the client side. The XML local resources must have _res for the filename. But, no MUI, list title are not localized.