International Glossaries

Last week, I explained how to install several Windows UI languages.

If you just want to peek into a Windows translation to check the translation of a menu item or some terminology, and you don't want to install full support of this language using MUI, there is an alternative : The Microsoft Glossaries.

A set of Excel files for each language

MS publishes its international glossaries as a set of Excel files. There is one set per language (it's a self-extracting exe). The files are more or less ordered collections of English/translation pairs of texts for the most important Windows components.

Note that the amount of translations available for each language varies pretty much. Consistency doesn't seem to be a motto for the people who collected the information.

Where ?

The files can be downloaded from the MSDN subscribers download area (MSDN subscribtion required). In the menu, choose Tools, SDKs and DDKs, then Developer Tools, SDKs and DDKs, then Microsoft Glossaries.