Go Global

Develop world-ready applications for the Microsoft Windows platform. Find information about the international features built into various Microsoft products and the rich set of tools to tap into emerging markets. Cope with issues that surround the programming and deployment of multi-language, multi-cultural, and multi-site scenarios that occur more and more in our increasingly interconnected world.

Getting Started

Globalization: Step-By-Step
Learn about programmatic considerations for globalizing your application.

NLS Knowledge Center
Here you will find information on National Language Support (NLS) in Windows that allows you to create globalized applications using core foundational pieces such as locales, basic text enablement, date/time/calendar formatting, keyboard layouts, sorting behavior, and more.

Windows MUI Knowledge Center
Find technical information, tutorials and community links for Windows Multilingual User Interface (MUI) as well as general information about Windows Language Packs and Language Interface Packs (LIPs).

International Text Support in Windows
Review the Win32 technologies that support different written languages (IME, MUI, NLS, Unicode, Uniscribe).

Script and Font Support in Windows
Understand changes made to text-display support for new scripts made in each major release of Windows.

Hands-On Information to Build International Applications
Find specific technology solutions for making your application world-ready, from .NET to HTML to MUI to SQL Server.

Featured Resources

What’s New in .NET Framework 4 Globalization Features
This whitepaper describes the main new features in the globalization namespace of the .NET Framework 4 Beta 1 release.

Extended Linguistic Services in Windows 7
Learn how the new Extended Linguistic Services (ELS) feature in Windows 7 allows you to auto-detect the language of Unicode text and use that information to help make smarter user experience choices for customers around the world, convert text from one writing system to another, and pick up new linguistic services in the future without learning new code.

Writing World-Ready Applications in Windows 7
This session from the Professional Developers Conference 2008 introduces the Extended Linguistic Services API (new to Windows 7), and the Multilingual User Interface (MUI) technology inside Windows 7 and .NET—including an end-to-end look at how to use MUI to take your application worldwide and extend your customer base into new language markets.

Understanding MUI
This article provides a conceptual overview of the Multilingual User Interface (MUI) technology, the platform support it provides for enabling multilingual user experiences, and the benefits it offers to the Windows ecosystem.

Microsoft Terminology Translations
You now have access to the terminology databases on the Microsoft Language Portal, which features an online search tool. The tool enables access to Microsoft's terminology databases that contain English terms, their definitions, and their translations. You can look up terms from English into selected target languages and from a target language into English!

Survey: Building International Software
In order to improve the process of creating international software, we kindly request technical decision makers involved in building internationalized applications to complete this questionnaire. The Windows International Team provides the infrastructure (development, localization) to bring the Windows Division products to a global marketplace. We are planning for our next version and we want to ensure we are incorporating the inputs/ideas of our customers in our discussions. We want to listen to our partners and understand their challenges.

Top Downloads

Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator
Download this tool to extend the international functionality of Windows-based systems by creating or modifying keyboard layouts. You can even use this tool to package layouts for delivery and installation!

Multilingual Text Generator (STRGEN)
When you're testing globalization of your application, you can use this tool to produce Unicode text for your UI strings.

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Code Gallery

Transliteration using Windows 7 Extended Linguistic Services
The LangConv sample application demonstrates the transliteration functionalities in Windows 7 ELS (Extended Linguistic Services). Transliterate a text file from a source language script to a target language script.

Building a Win32 app using MUI

Implementing MUI fallback with MFC

More: Microsoft Typography | Unicode Fundamentals | .NET Framework Developer Center | Visual Studio Developer Center | Developer & Architect Events

Microsoft Go Global Blogs

	Michael Kaplan's Blog Atlas? Jove? Where's my Wubi? (The latter shrugged, the former nodded) So some people noticed that the Wubi IME that used to work on Windows wasn't there anymore. You may... more Thursday, Jul 9 Suddenly the chair looks smarter and I am the one with the control issues Just about every day I learn new things about the iBot. Mostly it is just consequences stuff, like... more Wednesday, Jul 8
	Adrian Cadden’s Blog LocWebService: Only download resources per UserControl Introduction UserControl local resources configuration WCF Service Code 1. Introduction In this s... more Sunday, Nov 16 SL 2.0 localization on-demand sample updated Overview Updated To fix bugs on english code to check for culture installed and to fallback to en... more Sunday, Oct 26
	Shawn Steele's Blog Unicode, IDN (IDNA), EAI (IMA) and Homograph Security I wrote about IDN & Security before http://blogs.msdn.com/shawnste/archive/2005/03/03/384692.asp... more Tuesday, Jul 7   A helpful reader pointed out I don't really know Klingon. PS. I just checked out your blog (very... more Monday, Jun 8
	Kieran Snyder's Blog Language detection and system settings, part 1 Once upon a time, a customer got in touch with us about a font rendering problem, where inst... more Thursday, Dec 18 By popular demand: Transliteration vs. translation. Okay so no, when we say transliteration, we don’t mean translation. But they do have some th... more Monday, Dec 15
	Dina Lasheen's Blog Visual Studio International Feature Pack 2.0 Beta Visual Studio International Feature Pack 2.0 Beta has some great features for our international cust... more Sunday, Jun 14 Enter International Numbers in a Textbox This is a very common case…. There are so many application that needs to enter numbers in a text box... more Thursday, Apr 30

Windows International Test Blog

Enable Multilingual user to use Vista on preferred language UI
I have some ESL (English as Second Language) friends. Very often the question I have asked is: “How could I enable my Mom use my computer? She does not know English? Well it is quite challenge to... more
Thursday, Jun 11 by chzhao

Windows 7 Release Candidate available in multiple languages
Windows 7 Release Candidate is now available for download: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx The download is available in the following languages: · &nb... more
Tuesday, May 5 by oliversz@microsoft.com

Windows Application Quality Cookbook is now available for download
The Windows Application Quality Cookbook familiarizes developers and test engineers with how to verify the compatibility of their applications with Windows 7. The document is available to download h... more
Tuesday, Apr 21 by oliversz@microsoft.com

Case Study – Using Extended Linguistic Services (ELS) for Language Detection
Introduction In the international Testing world, we are facing a variety of challenges. One of them is to ensure correctness of localization files in the target builds. The builds matrix is huge as a... more
Tuesday, Mar 31 by chzhao

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Visual Studio Internationalization Blog

Internationalization of Visual Studio and Other Interesting Technology

How to set different language locale on Windows Vista OS?
1. If you need to install OS langpack, install MUI (OS langpack) on English Vista (go to Control panel->regional and Language Options->Keyboards and Languages tab-&... more
Monday, Jun 22 by mirapark

Silverlight V3 Beta launched!
If you have JPN Visual Studio 2008 installed, you can install the Runtime which has Japanese resources inside and SLTools below and create the Silverlight apps targeting version 3. Runtime:h... more
Wednesday, Mar 18 by mirapark

Silverlight V2 Tools and SDK live
Silverlight V2 Tools · CHT DMT page details: Chinese - TaiwanBits: http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/D/6/5D6B8CC0-1A92-42FF-B34... more
Wednesday, Jan 28 by mirapark

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Go Global Documentation

Globalizing and Localizing Applications (.NET Framework Developer's Guide)
Learn the three essential steps for creating world-ready applications.

Extend Your Code's Global Reach With New Features in the .NET Framework 2.0
Explore how the .NET Framework 2.0 can extend the global reach of your code.

Planning World-Ready Applications (Visual Studio)
Make the most of the application design phase to make your apps world-ready.

International Considerations for SQL Server
Uncover the international features of primary SQL Server components.

Windows Mobile 6 and Windows Embedded International Options
Internationalization resources for Windows Mobile 6 and Windows Embedded platforms.

Global Product Development Blog

GPDE Team Blog
A blog about Microsoft's Global Product Development - Europe team, based in Dublin, Ireland.

Treemap released in Silverlight Toolkit
In November I wrote about our Silverlight Treemap which visualises hierarchical data as a set of nested rectangles. Microsoft’s Global Product Development - Europe team has now released this control t... more
Sunday, Jul 12 by eurojobs

Programming with Silverlight and C#.
Marek Latuskiewicz, a senior development lead on our AdCenter team, has recently launched a blog about programming with Silverlight and C#. Marek plans to blog regularly on: 1) Ready to use, generic a... more
Thursday, May 14 by eurojobs

I am Test
There is a funny thing that happens when people mention the terms “test”, “tester”, or “quality assurance” in the computer programming industry. Groans can be heard about laborious, manual point-and-c... more
Tuesday, Apr 7 by eurojobs

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