Multilingual User Interface (MUI) in SharePoint 2013 Online

Multilingual User Interface (MUI) is a feature that came in with SharePoint 2010 and introduced the concept of having secondary, or preferred UI languages in the same SharePoint site.

The MUI feature only displays a site's user interface elements in a user's preferred language. It does not translate content or display content such as documents or list items to an alternate language.

This is a native SharePoint feature that is available on installation and the configuration of the required language pack and turning on the pack for the required site.

The article describes the procedure to enable the MUI feature on a SharePoint 2013 Online site.

1. The figure below shows the screen shot of the home page of my SharePoint 2013 Online Site.
   
   
   
   
2. In the case of SharePoint Online, all the language packs are installed and are available to the users. Only the language pack needs to be turned on through the UI. To do so go to Site Settings > Site Administration > language settings and check the languages for MUI.
   
   
3. For this demo I have selected French.
   
   
   
   
4. The next step is to select French as the preferred language in user settings. Click on the username on the home page of the site and go to the "About me" setting.
   
   
5. This will redirect you to your user profile page. Go to the "Edit your profile" link.
   
   
6. On the Edit Details page click on the ellipsis and go to "Language and Region" Settings.
   
   
   
   
7. Under my display languages, choose "French (France)" and add it to "My Display Languages". Make sure that French tops the list, giving it a priority, in case you need to add other languages as well.
   
   
   
   
8. Save the settings. With SharePoint Online, it takes some time for the user preference settings to be reflected.
   
   
9. To view the language in French, the language needs to be added to the browser settings as well. I am using IE. I added French in the Language Preference as below:
   
   
   
   
10. Now login to the home page of your site, in my case Demo Site. Depending on my preferred settings, the UI will be displayed in French as shown below.
    
    
    
    
11. It is important to note that in the SharePoint 2010 MUI feature, users could switch among languages using a handy setting by clicking on the context menu of the logged in username then “Select Display Language" . In SharePoint 2013 it is not possible to do so as the setting has been removed.
    
    
12. SharePoint 2013 relies on the user's preferred language settings and browser language settings to display the UI in a specific language. Hence if you now want to view the UI in the default language, English, you will need to change the language preference settings in your profile page.
    
    
13. Another thing to note is that if I add new application content in the French UI of the site, the content will be displayed in the same language in the default UI-English as well.
    
    
14. For example I add a new Document Library with the name "Documents de l'équipe" as below.
    
    
    
    
    
    
15. Now, if another user logs in whose UI language preference is the default, English, then the homepage will also display the Document Library name as "Documents de l'équipe " and will not be auto translated to English.
    
    
    
    
16. To translate the Document Library title into the default site language, the user will need to change the language preferences in the browser or user profile to display the site in the default/English language and then make the change to the Document Library title.