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SharePoint Intranet Best Practices for English and Arabic Sites
Question details
The user is looking for best practices and configuration steps to build a multilingual SharePoint intranet supporting both English and Arabic users.
- Product
- Microsoft SharePoint
- Device & OS
- not provided
- Scenario
- Building, configuring, or managing a multilingual intranet site for a diverse organization.
- Observed behavior
- The goal is to establish clear navigation, consistent templates, proper permissions, accessible content, and full language support for both English and Arabic.
Ensure you have Site Owner or Site Administrator permissions in SharePoint to configure multilingual settings, enable translation features, and modify site-wide permissions.
Configure Multilingual Features and Content Translation
Enable multiple languages on your SharePoint site and manage page translations for English and Arabic to ensure localized content delivery.
SharePoint allows you to create sites with a default language and then enable additional languages. This ensures that users can view the intranet in their preferred language while allowing content creators to translate news and pages accurately.
Navigate to your SharePoint site. Click the gear icon (Settings) in the top right corner, select 'Site information', and then click 'View all site settings'.
Under the 'Site Administration' section, click on 'Language settings'. Toggle the switch for 'Enable pages and news to be translated into multiple languages' to On.
Type 'Arabic' (or English, if Arabic is the default) in the 'Add or remove languages' box. You can optionally assign specific users as translators for this language. Click 'Save'.
Go to a page or news post you want to translate. Click 'Translation' in the top command bar, and select 'Create' next to the Arabic language to generate a draft.
Open the newly created Arabic draft. Have your translator replace the English text with Arabic text, ensure the layout looks correct in Right-to-Left (RTL) format, and click 'Publish'.
Optimize Navigation, Web Parts, and Permissions
Ensure structural consistency, targeted content, and appropriate access control across your multilingual SharePoint site.
Create Multilingual Documents with WPS Office
While managing your SharePoint intranet, you need a reliable office suite to create, edit, and translate the documents you upload. WPS Office provides a free, lightweight, and fully compatible alternative to Microsoft Office, complete with familiar tools and seamless multilingual document creation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does SharePoint automatically translate my intranet content into Arabic?
No, SharePoint's multilingual feature creates a linked copy of the page for the target language, but it does not auto-translate the text. You or a designated translator must manually translate the content and update the Arabic page.
How is Right-to-Left (RTL) formatting handled in Arabic SharePoint sites?
SharePoint natively supports RTL formatting. When a user changes their personal Microsoft 365 language and region settings to Arabic, the SharePoint interface, menus, and text alignment automatically flip to an RTL layout.
Can I use different web parts on the English and Arabic versions of the same page?
Yes. Once a translation page is created, it functions as a separate page linked to the original. You can add, remove, or rearrange web parts on the Arabic page without affecting the source English page.
