SharePoint: How to setup variations in MOSS 2007

What are MOSS Language Packs?
MOSS Language packs enable site owners and site collection administrators to create SharePoint sites and site collections in multiple languages without requiring separate installations of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. You install language packs, which contain language-specific site templates, on your front-end Web servers. When an administrator creates a site or a site collection based on a language-specific site template, the text that appears on the site or the site collection is displayed in the site template's language. Language Packs are typically used in multinational deployments where a single server farm supports people in different locations or in situations where sites and Web pages must be duplicated in one or more languages. Application of a Language Pack will not change the language of the installed Office server product SKU.

What’s the difference between WSS Language Packs and MOSS language Packs?

WSS Language Packs are for WSS stand-alone installations and enable the creation of SharePoint sites in different languages; multiple language packs can be installed on the same server.
MOSS Language Packs are for MOSS, MOSS for Search, Forms Server, and Project Server installations and enable the creation of SharePoint sites in different languages; multiple language packs can be installed on the same server.

What’s the difference between a MOSS Language Pack and a fully localized version of MOSS?
Microsoft’s 2007 Office server products are localized into languages in two different ways: 1) fully translated SKUs and 2) Language Packs. A language-specific SKU delivers the respective Office server product localized into a given language. A Language Pack may be applied to an installed Office server product to create sites or site collections in other languages. Application of a Language Pack will not change the language of the installed Office server product SKU, or the language of the admin feature

A small note before we start with: Site variations can only be used if you have created a site using one of the Publishing templates, or if you have activated the Publishing feature for your site.

Prepare Operating System for multi-lingual changes:-

1) Install additional language files on Windows Server 2003

On your front-end Web server, click Start, point to Settings and then Control Panel, and then click Regional and Language Options.
In the Regional and Language Options dialog box, on the Languages tab, in the Supplemental Language Support section, select both of the following checkboxes:
Install files for complex script and right-to-left languages
Install files for East Asian languages
Click OK in the dialog box that alerts you that additional disk space is required for the files.

Click OK to install the additional language files.
When prompted, insert your Windows Server 2003 product disc or provide the location of your Windows Server 2003 installation files. When prompted to restart your computer, click Yes.

2) Install additional language files on Windows Server 2008

Download the Windows Server 2008 Language Packs (x86 / x64) from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=E9F6F200-CFAF-4516-8E96-E4D4750397FF&displaylang=en; It will download Language Pack as .IMG file
Extract the .IMG file using WinRAR or UltraISO to a folder, you should see a folder by name “langpacks” within extracted folder
Do the following for each front-end Web server -
On your front-end Web server, click Start, point to Settings and then Control Panel, and then click Regional and Language Options.

In the Regional and Language Options dialog box, on the Keyboards and Languages tab, in the Display Language section, click Install/Uninstall languages.

In the Install or Uninstall Languages dialog box, click Install languages.

On the Select the Languages to Install page click Browse folder to navigate to where you extracted; point it to the “langpacks” folder > Click Select Folder
Select the language to install from the list of available languages
Select all the languages that you want to install, and then click Next.
Accept the terms, and then click Next.
Click Install.

Prepare SharePoint for multi-lingual changes:-

WSS Language Pack Go to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=36ee1bf0-652c-4e38-b247-f29b3eefa04&DisplayLang=en and Change Language to French Website language will now change to French
click on download
MOSS Language Pack Go to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=2447426b-8689-4768-bff0-cbb511599a45&displaylang=en and Change Language to French Website language will now change to French
click on download

Save SharePointLanguagePack.exe and ServerLanguagePack.img to a folder on WFE
Extract ServerLanguagePack.img using WinRAR or UltraISO
Install SharePointLanguagePack.exe for WSS > Don’t run PSCONFIG now
From extracted location run Setup.exe for MOSS
Run PSCONFIG and ensure its successful > IISRESET
Browse to MOSS site where you want to configure variations > Go to Site Settings > Variations
Specify the variation home (if same site then put a "/")
Choose the following settings

Automatically create site and page variations
Recreate a new target page when the source page is republished.
Update Web Part changes to target pages when variation source page update is propagated.
Reference existing resources

Go to Site Settings Variation Labels New Label Provide values as below screenshot > OK

(Now we are making a label for default language site (English in our case) and hence it will be the source variation)