findinsite-ms language support

findinsite-ms automatically responds to search queries using each user's preferred language - if possible. (Users set their preferred language in their browser.)

Alternatively, a user can override the preferred language setting as described below. The override language setting is stored in a cookie (for one year).

Response language

Currently, 29 response languages are supported, including most European Union languages. English is the default if the user's preferred language is not recognised.
The findinsite-ms Control Panel shows all the languages that are currently loaded. This should be the same as the list below. Older Western browsers may not be able to display the Asian language names correctly.

Response Character Set

findinsite-ms always responds using the UTF-8 character set (charset). If any characters cannot be represented, then they are represented with HTML escape sequences.

Local
language name Language name
in English Language code Country code

български Bulgarian bg

Česky Czech cs

Dansk Danish da

Deutsch German de

Eesti keel Estonian et

Español Spanish es

ελληνικά Greek el

English English en

Français French fr

Hrvatski Croatian hr

Italiano Italian it

Magyar Hungarian hu

Latviešu valoda Latvian lv

Lietuvių kalba Lithuanian lt

Malti Maltese mt

Nederlands Dutch nl

Norsk Norwegian no

Polski Polish pl

Português Portuguese pt

Română Romanian ro

Slovenčina Slovak sk

Slovenščina Slovenian sl

Suomi Finnish fi

Svenska Swedish sv

العربية Arabic ar

ภาษาไทย Thai th

日本語 Japanese ja

简体中文 Simplified Chinese zh

繁体中文 Traditional Chinese zh TW

The table above gives the ISO Language Code and where specified, the ISO Country Code. The two character lower case language codes are defined by ISO-639 at http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/http/related/iso639.txt. The two character upper case country codes are defined by ISO-3166 at http://www.chemie.fu-berlin.de/diverse/doc/ISO_3166.html.

User's Preference

findinsite-ms works out which language to use by looking at a header sent by each user's browser. The Accept-Language HTTP header has a list of the user's preferred languages, specifying a language code, a country code and a priority.
findinsite-ms tries to match the language and country codes first. Then a language code match is used. If there is no match then English is used.

User Language Override

By default the findinsite-ms output includes set language links like this in the page footer:

Language: English Deutsch Español, etc.

If a user clicks on one of the named links, then findinsite-ms will always use that language for its output. (The user's browser must have cookies enabled for this to work.) Click on the "Language" link to turn off this override.
The set language links are generated when %LANGUAGES% appears in one of the findinsite-ms template files.

Adding more languages

You can add support for more languages (or change the existing languages) by setting the Additional Languages box in the Control Panel Look and Feel section.
You need to alter or write a language file for each language. Please contact sales/support if you want to do this. It's not too hard - you just need a plain text editor.
Put the language file(s) in the work directory. Then put a comma separated list of the language files in the Additional Languages box, eg:
fisEnGB3.hil, fisEl3.hil

If one of your language files specifies a language code / country code combination that already exists, then your language file will take precedence over the existing file.