The way Office suite handles languages has always been rather basic, influenced by American culture, where using multiple languages in the same document is rare. This is not the case in Europe and many other countries. Although Office products are now more sophisticated, language functionalities remain underdeveloped. Five areas of improvement have been identified to better meet the needs of those creating multilingual documents.
1) LANGUAGES AND KEYBOARDS
The writing language should not be tied to the keyboard used, nor to the operating system's language. For example, with an Italian keyboard, one should be able to write in English, German, or Spanish even if the Office interface is in English. The language of the interface, keyboard, and text are independent properties. With an international English keyboard, “dead keys” should enable writing in various European languages, even if the Office interface is in German or Spanish. Office should not assume the text language matches the keyboard or operating system language. Users should specify the main document language and easily insert terms in other languages.
2) MULTILINGUAL DOCUMENTS
It's common to have terms in different languages in the same document, such as quotes in French or Italian in an English text. In technical texts, using English terms is normal. Assigning a language to a term or paragraph should be easy, for example, by selecting the text and choosing the language from the context menu. The product should remember used languages and display them in a “Select Language >” submenu, with an “Other Language...” option. Character and paragraph styles should be associable with specific languages and applicable in both Word and PowerPoint.
3) MULTIPLE CUSTOM DICTIONARIES
When adding a term to a dictionary, there should be a custom dictionary for each language, and the term should be added based on its language. This dictionary should be accessible in all Office applications. It should be possible to mark a term as a “Proper Name,” which should be valid in all languages. The “Add to Dictionary” function should choose the dictionary based on the term's language and distinguish if it is a proper name. There should be an easily accessible dictionary editor to manage terms.
4) SPELLING RULES
The spelling checker often flags errors that are not, applying American grammatical rules not suited to European languages. It should be possible to tell Word to ignore a rule once or always, and this preference should be stored in the document. Additionally, there should be a mechanism to report to Microsoft which grammatical rules are inappropriate, with the ability to disable them individually for a specific document without fully disabling the checking function.
5) CONSISTENCY OF INTERFACES
The language management in the Office suite should be consistent across all text-producing applications, such as Word, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook. This concerns the context menus, the ribbon, and commands in the lower bar of the window.
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