This is a live blog post from the SharePoint Talks 2010, speaker: Spence Harbar

Let’s start with some definitions:
Multi lingual user interface: the language of for instance the Ribbon changes due to language packs but the make pleased really remains the same.

Multi lingual sites: the make pleased is translated by a human translation process and a workflow.

The variations feature is an infrastructure plumbing feature to enable multi lingual sites, nothing more. The role of language packs is to provide the user with a translated GUI. The packs are honestly huge and if you are hosting a large number of languages take that into account.

So the plotting considerations are basically around: language packs, information architecture (storage space design), hierarchy creation, navigation, redirection logic, client language selection and translation.

Information architecture
Design this upfront. Reflect about storage space design, navigation, security, performance, and farm topology.

Site hierarchy
For each language (categorize) a new site is made under the variation root (most cases this is Home). Each categorize contains the make pleased for that language. To start with you will have to configure the variations settings: a new redirect .aspx at the root. Next you will have to make the variations marks like en-US, es-ES, de_DE, mobile and so on. Set en-US as source. Next, make the variations hierarchy: sites and pages are made. So when you make a new source page they will get made at each variation site till they get approved.
The variations hierarchy is a process that is in SPS2007 slot and expensive, it runs in process and is basically a top support issue for MS. SP2 introduces the variations fix up tool.

Variations improvements with SharePoint 2010
Reliability: all operations run with Timer jobs. And there are many relationships list machinate changes. A modified fix up tool to manage for instance the timer jobs and the core process has improved considerably in terms of reminiscence treatment and pause & resume support.

Variations logic
The variation root page that redirects users according to language and cookie settings. Also a master page modifications are needed to support different layouts for different languages. Related to that are the CSS considerations to deal with for instance reading direction.

Demo: setting up a multi lingual site
Configuration: Variation root page, automatic creation (by defaulting it makes site and page variations but we force not want to do that), Re-erect deleted target page, Update target page web parts, notification, resources are the new configuration parameters.
Next, when you make a new categorize you now select the site template language for the GUI (consider to keep that English for support), the backdrop, which make pleased should be made a hierarchy for (pages, sites etc), and if this is the source variation.

Multi lingual user interface (MUI)
Site can now have alternate languages. Through the site settings the site owner can now select which alternate languages should be available on the site. When he does that, a language selector will appear as part of the Global user menu on the top right corner of your site.
If you make a sub site, a language selector is part of the site template picker dialog.
Users are able to translate words for attention point make pleased like Titles and Descriptions of sites and lists and export that through a store file, and import again on another site.
Central administration is now available in multiple languages as well, so you can select that the same way you can do on a fixed team site.

Really, to my opinion, the session did not exactly surprise me that much. I had probable more improvements to be honest.

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