Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

terminology, a Language Interface Pack (LIP) is a

skin Skin is the layer of usually soft, flexible outer tissue covering the body of a vertebrate animal, with three main functions: protection, regulation, and sensation. Other cuticle, animal coverings, such as the arthropod exoskeleton, have diffe ...

for localizing a Windows operating system in languages such as Lithuanian, Serbian,

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people *Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece See also * * ...

Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nativ ...

, and

Thai Thai or THAI may refer to: * Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia ** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand ** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand *** Thai script *** Thai (Unicode block ...

. Based on

Multilingual User Interface Multilingual User Interface (MUI) enables the localization of the user interface of an application. MUI is provided by Microsoft as an integrated feature of its operating system Windows 11 down to Windows 2000 with some limitations in older vers ...

(MUI) "technology", a LIP also requires the software to have a base installed language and provides users with an approximately 80 percent localized user experience by translating a reduced set of

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

elements. Unlike MUI packs which are available only to Microsoft volume license customers and for specific SKUs of Windows Vista, a Language Interface Pack is available for free and can be installed on a licensed copy of

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

Office An office is a space where an Organization, organization's employees perform Business administration, administrative Work (human activity), work in order to support and realize objects and Goals, plans, action theory, goals of the organizati ...

and a fixed "base language". In other words, if the desired additional language has incomplete localization, users may add it for free, while if the language has complete localization, the user must pay for it by licensing a premium version of Windows. (In Windows Vista and Windows 7, only the Enterprise and Ultimate editions are "multilingual".) Typically, a Language Interface Pack is designed for regional markets that do not have full MUI packs or fully localized versions of a product. It is an intermediate localized solution that enables computer users to adapt their software to display many commonly used features in their native language. Each new Language Interface Pack is built using the glossary created by the ''Community Glossary Project'' in cooperation with the local government, academia, and local linguistic experts.

References

{{Microsoft APIs Software add-ons