SharePoint 2016 base language and language packs

All over the world there are customers that want to install and use SharePoint in their preferred language (official language, e.g. in Germany it’s German). I can fully understand the backgrounds of this wish:

Not every employee speaks English
Not every administrator speaks English
Adopting a new System is easier, when it’s in the mother tongue.

The SharePoint 2016 sources are available in the following 24 languages. Additionally, there are the following 49 language packs:

Language	Source Language	Language Pack
Arabic	x	x
Azerbaijani	x
Basque		x
Bosnian		x
Bulgarian		x
Catalan		x
Chinese – Simplified	x	x
Chinese – Traditional	x	x
Croatian		x
Czech	x	x
Danish	x	x
Dari		x
Dutch	x	x
English	x	x
Estonian		x
Finnish	x	x
French	x	x
Galician		x
German	x	x
Greek	x	x
Hebrew	x	x
Hindi		x
Hungarian	x	x
Indonesian		x
Irish		x
Italian	x	x
Japanese	x	x
Kazakh		x
Korean	x	x
Latvian		x
Lithuanian		x
Macedonian		x
Malay		x
Norwegian-Bokmal	x	x
Polish	x	x
Portuguese-Brazil	x	x
Portuguese-Portugal	x	x
Romanian		x
Russian	x	x
Serbian		x
Slovak		x
Slovenian		x
Spanish	x	x
Swedish	x	x
Thai	x	x
Turkish	x	x
Ukrainian		x
Vietnamese		x
Welsh		x

There are many possible variations of base language and language packs.

I tend to install SharePoint with the Englisch Sources and prefer to install Language Packs afterwards!

The reason behind this philosophy: “Keep it simple!”

Working every day with different SharePoint farms can be challenging if the language of the SharePoint logs vary or the PowerShell commands do need to be modified to match the installed SharePoint language.

The tools available focus on English SharePoint sources:

AutoSPInstaller needs to be modified to match non-english sources (Installation on non-english systems (French))
SharePointDSC does not support non-english sources (SharePointDsc Multilingual Support)
Possible answers for error messages (not english) are very hard to find with google

…and I prefer Central Administration to be in English. The german translation does not feelt right 😉

What’s the best way to figure out the base language and the installed Language Packs?

I use the following PowerShell Script to figre out the base language and the installed Language Packs:

	#Requires -RunAsAdministrator
	function Get-SharePointLanguages
	{
	$baseLanguageKey = Get-Item 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\16.0\ServerLanguage'
	$baseLanguageValue = $baseLanguageKey.Property

	if($null -ne $baseLanguageValue -and $baseLanguageValue.Count -eq 1)
	{
	$baseLanguageCulture = New-Object System.Globalization.CultureInfo([int]$baseLanguageValue[0])
	Write-Host "SharePoint base language:" –ForegroundColor Green
	Write-Host $($baseLanguageCulture.DisplayName)
	}

	$languagePackKey = Get-Item 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\16.0\InstalledLanguages'

	if($null -ne $languagePackKey)
	{
	Write-Host "SharePoint Language Packs:" –ForegroundColor Green
	$languagePackKey.Property \| ForEach-Object –Process {
	$languagePackCulture = New-Object System.Globalization.CultureInfo([int]$_)
	Write-Host $languagePackCulture.DisplayName
	}

	}
	}
	Export-ModuleMember –Function Get-*