Variations and Multiple Languages Sites in SharePoint Server 2010 (ECM)

Many companies operate globally, and even in their home markets they often must appeal to a diverse customer base that speaks multiple languages. This diversity often requires that their Web presence sites be customized for markets of different cultures and geographic regions.

Maintaining many similar versions, or variations, of a Web presence site is difficult and time-consuming because of the need to coordinate the creation and updating of content among all of the different variations.

To simplify this process, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 provides a site variation management system. Site managers can define a series of site variations and mark one variation as the primary variation. This ensures that changes made in the sources are properly reconciled in all other variations. This system is integrated with workflow and content import or export to enable integration with third-party translation services. New updates to target variations can use the workflow system to automatically send updates for translation. When translation is completed, updates can be imported and set for final approval through the workflow system.

Variations can be used for publishing related sites or pages, either for use in multilingual content or for device targeting.