Multilingual documentation: English and localized Help

The Search tool in the Microsoft Language Portal lets you access the Microsoft terminology database, with thousands of English terms, their definitions and their translations in more than 90 languages, and millions of software strings from localized Microsoft products (also known as UI strings, i.e. the text that appears in the User Interface of a product).

The localized Help (the so-called UA or User Assistance , available online for most products) is not part of the search options, but there is an easy way to look up how the topics were translated. Once you have identified the source text you are interested in, you can find the relevant translations by editing the page address:

• In MSDN (Visual Studio, SQL Server, .NET Framework, etc.) you need to replace the  en-us part of the address with the appropriate language tag, e.g fr-fr for French:
  English: msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/1021kkz0.aspx
  French: msdn2.microsoft.com/fr-fr/library/1021kkz0.aspx
    
• The same approach also works for Technet (e.g. Exchange documentation):
  English: technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123979(EXCHG.80).aspx
  German: technet.microsoft.com/de-de/library/bb123979(EXCHG.80).aspx
    
• In the Windows Help topics you need to replace both the en-us language tag and the locale code (LCID) at the end of the URL, e.g. 1033 with 1040 for Italian.English: windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/cc452fac-08581033.mspx Italian: windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/it-it/Help/cc452fac-08581040.mspx
    
• Also in Office Online you need to replace both en-us and1033:
  English: office.microsoft.com/en-us/worldwide/HP010713011033.aspx
  Russian: office.microsoft.com/ru-ru/worldwide/HP010713011049.aspx 
    
  A list of language identifiers is available here.

Licia Corbolante, Italian terminologist