In today’s global workplace, a SharePoint multilingual intranet must do more than swap words in navigation and site title. True localization means every user interface element – menus, all types of navigation, form labels, and custom web parts – speaks the visitor’s language. In practice, this requires mastering SharePoint’s Multilingual User Interface (MUI) features, not just translating page text and a few easily accessible strings. As PointFire explains, its solution “seamlessly integrates with Microsoft’s built-in solution, to give you fully and truly multilingual sites. In other words, localization must go beyond literal translation to adapt the entire site experience.
The Limits of Built-In SharePoint Translation
Out of the box, SharePoint offers basic multilingual options (like MUI and Variations), but these are partial. Even Microsoft notes that SharePoint creates alternate language pages but does not translate them. In practice, this means important parts of the site remain untranslated. For example, hard-coded values (such as choice-column options or menu text) and custom web parts are typically left in the default language. As one PointFire feature comparison points out, SharePoint’s MUI and Variations are “incomplete and aren’t built for multilingual collaboration,” leaving organizations to juggle multiple sites or manual processes.
Why MUI Mastery is Key to True Localization
Mastering MUI means bridging the gap between translation and full localization. It involves customizing every UI element so that a user in, say, Germany sees the entire SharePoint site (both content and interface) in German, without gaps. Tools that handle MUI make this possible. For example, a PointFire 365 add-in “lets you filter content according to your language, change your language, and translate the Multilingual User Interface (MUI)”. In practice, this creates language-specific versions of every page, web part, and document. PointFire puts it simply: its UI localization features “translate everything that multilingual SharePoint can’t” – from user-customized site labels to choice-column values that SharePoint alone would leave behind.
PointFire’s MUI-Powered Localization Features
PointFire 365 and Translator extend SharePoint in ways that make MUI mastery straightforward. For example:
Instant language toggle:
A built-in SharePoint language switch can take up to a day to update, but PointFire’s toggle applies changes in under 5 seconds. It optimizes SharePoint’s display caches to apply language changes more quickly, providing a faster interface update than the native toggle. Users can then click a language button on any page and immediately see all content and menus in their chosen language.
UI Customization per language:
PointFire lets administrators tailor the interface term-by-term. As the product page notes, you can “Tailor your user interface in each language to use consistent terms that your users recognize”. This covers custom site navigation, ribbon text, list names, and more, so every language version feels native.
Full UI and Content coverage:
PointFire translates both UI elements and content (pages, documents, libraries) in one solution. It works on classic, modern, and team sites, and there are even versions for on-premises SharePoint. In short, PointFire allows for a “Single-site architecture” where users stay on the same URL, but the MUI and content filter change dynamically. It “synchronizes UI and content in the user’s selected language” on a single site, avoiding content fragmentation.
Hard-coded and structured elements:
Beyond pages, PointFire handles lists and webparts. The tool can filter libraries and web parts by language and even translate view names, folder names, and choice columns – things SharePoint’s default tools miss. These capabilities ensure no interface text is left behind.
Together, these features transform your SharePoint deployment. As one page highlights, you can access the same page and see the content and all parts of the UI, displayed in your preferred language. This unified approach also simplifies SharePoint content management: instead of copying or tracking items across language-specific sites, everything lives together. PointFire notes that its translation tools “help streamline multilingual support, making it easier for global teams to manage content in multiple languages.
In short, effective SharePoint localization is about more than word-for-word translation. You must make the entire interface multilingual. Tools like PointFire 365 let organizations truly master the MUI – they localize every menu, button, and label alongside the page content. As one product summary puts it, PointFire “translates all UI elements and content like pages, documents, and lists, and ensures everything is in the user’s language. The result is a SharePoint multilingual intranet where users enjoy a seamless native-language experience, and SharePoint content management is unified across all languages.
