I have a question on WSS and SharePoint 2007 Language Packs. We are hosting a SharePoint farm with english operators. We always want site action menues, logs, etc in English. We now have a requirement to host Spanish sites. I'm assuming we DO NOT need WSS and SP Spanish language packs for this to happen but i would like to confirm. Users should be able to author thier pages/content in Spanish WIHOUT addtional language packs...correct? Remember we always want site actions and logs in English.

Users can edit CONTENT in any language. The addition of language packs makes it possible to deal with special characters and symbols of other languages. If you keep your English system, the user content can be in Spanish and there is no need for language packs. So to answer your question... yes, your assumption is correct. I trust that answers your question... Thanks C http://www.cjvandyk.com/blog

I assume the special characters would only be needed for double byte characters such as asian and arabic languages...correct?

My reading of your question is slightly different to Cornelius's but it hangs on what you mean by authoring pages and whether in fact your main aim is to retain English as the language for error messages. If you add a Spanish Language Pack to an English language WSS 3.0 installation, you will continue to get error messages in English. As this to me seems to be your main aim (and one that I can understand), it would seem sensible to install the Spanish LP and to create your Spanish language sites using the site templates it makes available. In that way your menus etc. will be in Spanish for those sites and you will not need to mess around trying to make an English site look Spanish.2010 Books: SPF 2010; SPS 2010; SPD 2010; InfoPath 2010; Workflow etc. 2007 Books: WSS 3.0; MOSS 2007; SPD 2007; InfoPath 2007; PerformancePoint; SSRS; Workflow Both lists also include books in French; German; Spanish with even more languages in the 2007 list.

We'd prefer not to install all the LP's due to the amount of work and size used on the C:\ of the servers. So with the threads above, i can safely assume that LP's do not need to be installed in order to author content in languages other than English. My only question left is for the double byte character languages.

Actual Content is not a problem. But things like names of document libraries and Lists (and Views) should avoid non-standard characters. Later addition: There is hardly any work involved in installing Language Packs (download them and click the exe to install them) and if you are worried about the space they take up then you have a wrongly configured server. Move the log files elsewhere - that will free up more than enough space for the Language Packs. 2010 Books: SPF 2010; SPS 2010; SPD 2010; InfoPath 2010; Workflow etc. 2007 Books: WSS 3.0; MOSS 2007; SPD 2007; InfoPath 2007; PerformancePoint; SSRS; Workflow Both lists also include books in French; German; Spanish with even more languages in the 2007 list.