Visual Studio 2012 includes built-in support for 10 languages such as English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. As a developer, you can download an installation package of your desired language instead of downloading and installing separate language packs as in the case of previous editions.
The recently released, Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 also includes support for all the above mentioned languages. Alternatively, you can also separately download packs for 14 languages which includes Czech, Polish, Turkish, Brazilian Portuguese that provide a localized experience for the majority of the Visual Studio user interface.
"Throughout the Visual Studio 2012 product cycle, we maintained close partnerships with prestigious universities and with Microsoft Valued Professionals (MVPs) from around the world, with the goal of supporting additional languages in Visual Studio 2012," says Somasegar, Corporate Vice President, Developer Division, Microsoft.
In addition to language packs, Microsoft has also localized the content of Visual Studio documentation on MSDN. According to Somasegar, the translated content is a result of the work carried out by Visual Studio team members and also by community members such as Microsoft MVPs.
Microsoft has also provided a facility to recognize community volunteers via MSDN and TechNet recognition system who help with the localization process through MSDN Translation Wiki.
Jean-Francois is not in favour of language packs as he commented:
I'd be really curious to know how many people pick Visual Studio in their mother language.
Indeed, even though VS is available in my mother language, I would never want to pick that. Most samples and tutorials on MSDN and over the Internet are anyway in English. Development languages themselves are English based (string, dictionary, list, window, handle, ...). In my view, English reading/writing is mandatory if you do any software development.
"Localized VS = localized error messages. I would use localized VS only if option to disable localization for error messages was to be provided," mentions Gregory in reply to Somesegar's blog post.
Chriga feels:
I also do not need that internationalization. This make searches so difficult.
Marcello still use Visual C++ 6.0. He also mentions that the IDE and tools you use will not make you a better programmer.
Ron agrees to Marcello's comment and feels that MSFT book online are too wordy and not enough concise real world information.
Chris posted the following query but Somasegar not yet replied to it
When will MS support non-US English (British, Australian etc)?
References
Book: NET Internationalization by Guy Smith-Ferrier, Addison-Wesley (ISBN: 0321341384)
Podcast: Internationalization, Globalization and Localization by Guy Smith-Ferrier - November 19, 2012
