Impressive Efforts from Microsoft to Expand Language Support for Its Products

Over the past three months, Microsoft has released a number of resources designed to improve the user experience of people around the world looking to leverage the company’s software in their native language. According to Palle Petersen, Lead International Project Engineer at Microsoft, a collection of UI translations, as well as expanded terminology went live on the Microsoft Language Portal in the last 90 days or so.

“This data will help you globalize and localize products quickly, efficiently and to the same style, tone and terminology standards as in localized Microsoft products,” Petersen revealed.

Among the products that offer additional language options to users as of this year, are Internet Explorer 9, Office 2010, Dynamics CRM, SQL Server Compact, and Visual Studio Windows Azure Tools.

Petersen provided a list highlighting the expansion of language support for the software giant’s products, which Softpedia readers will find included at the bottom of this article.

The Redmond company is obviously not stopping here. In fact, additional updates are coming to the Microsoft Language Portal – case in point: Windows Phone 7 style guides for UK, German, Italian, French and Spanish, which are planned for launch in the next few weeks.

Here is the list with the language support expansions for a few Microsoft products in the past three months:

“• Internet Explorer 9: 53 more languages added in addition to the existing 39, bringing the total number of Internet Explorer 9 languages to 93.

• Office 2010: More Office 2010 Language Interface Packs that have released in the last few months. New languages include Azerbaijani, Tatar, Luxembourgish, Assamese, Filipino, Malayalam, Khmer, Bengali, Nepali, Odia, Sinhala, Telugu, Afrikaans, Bangla, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Kiswahili, Malay (Brunei), Setswana, Quechua, Maltese, Georgian and Bosnian (Latin). More languages are coming in the near future.

• SQL Server Compact: 13 languages added.

• Dynamics CRM 5: 40 languages added.

• Visual Studio Windows Azure Tools: 9 languages added.”