See About Language Packs for a quick introduction to the varied uses of Language Packs. This section discusses how to use Family Historian to record data in any language other than English.
If the language used in a project (the project language) is not English, it is important that you specify this in the Header record for the project. To open the Header record, click on the Header Record menu command, which is on the Special Records sub-menu of the View menu. Pick the language from the dropdown list in the Language field. This field can be left blank if the project is English, as that is the assumed default if no language is specified. You only have to specify the project language once. And of course if you have multiple projects in different languages, they don't all have to be the same language. Each project can be in whatever language you like.
Data entry is not affected in any way by the specified project language. It only matters when it comes to producing output, such as reports and diagrams. Suppose, for example, that your project data is all in French and you opt to produce a report in French. If Family Historian doesn't realise that the data is already in French, it will try to translate terms that do not need to be translated. It may even mark words as untranslated when in fact they are already correct. For example, suppose that a person's Occupation is recorded as "Ingénieur" (French for 'engineer'), if Family Historian did not realise that the project data was already in French, it would not only look up this word in its translation tables (which is unnecessary), but it might even incorrectly mark this word as untranslated. Specifying the correct language for the project will prevent this happening.
With all fields that require you to type in a value as text, enter the value in the project language. For example, a field may be labelled in English as "Occupation", but if you are working in French, you should nevertheless enter the value in your project language (e.g. "Ingénieur" if the project language is French, and the person was an engineer). Equally, all notes should also be written in the project language. Data entry in most languages should not present any special problems. Family Historian uses Unicode, which allows characters from most languages to be recorded correctly. Press-and-hold any key to enter accent characters. If the accent you need is not there, you can configure the window to show the accents you need. See How to Enter Accent Characters and Configure Language and Accent Characters to learn more.
Enter all names, places and addresses in the project language - if there is even a question of translation, which with most names at least, there isn't. If you are recording data in, say, French, and you would normally use a French word for some parts of place names, you should also do so when entering place name information (or address information) into your project. So, for example, if you would normally refer to Greenwich, London, England as "Greenwich, Londres, Angleterre" (i.e. by translating 'London' and 'England', but not 'Greenwich'), then that is how you should enter that place reference - i.e. as "Greenwich, Londres, Angleterre". Individual names, however, should never be translated, whatever language you are working in. So "Peter Grimes" would be entered as "Peter Grimes" and never as (say) "Pierre Grimes".
Even if your project language is not English, when you look at the project in Family Historian, the dates will normally be shown in the Property Box in English. Within the program, dates, sex, and other specialist fields like that (with computer-controlled options and values), are currently always displayed in English. They are stored internally in a special format that Family Historian understands. This internal format will always be the same regardless of the language that a user might be working with. Fields such as dates, that are stored in a special format, do not therefore count as being 'in' any particular language - even if they are currently displayed in English. In the future Family Historian may provide options to allow such fields to be displayed within the program in other languages. For this to happen there would be no need to change the way these fields are stored internally at all.
Dates can be entered using any of the techniques outlined in How to Enter Dates. It is important to appreciate that this does not include using non-English month names (assuming you're using the Gregorian calendar which almost everyone will). You cannot currently use your own language month names for data entry. The important thing is that Family Historian should recognise the date information you specify. As long as it does so (and it will warn you if it doesn't), it should be able to subsequently output the date information in your required language correctly, as long as you have a suitable language pack. As already stated, dates will be displayed in English within the program. If you see a date displayed in a non-English language like this: "3 février 1987" (i.e. with double quotes around the date), something has gone wrong. The double quotes around the date mean that Family Historian has interpreted the date as a date phrase, and it has no idea what date this refers to. A date phrase is used when you don't know the date, but want to record whatever clues you have about it (e.g. "two weeks after his wife died"). If you have a genuine need to use a date phrase such as that, you should record it in the language of your content (the project language). But that is the exception. In every other respect, entering dates in a non-English project is exactly as if you were entering the same dates in an English project.
When you enter sex or age information, you will be required to choose from options that are given in English, and the value chosen will be displayed in English. Again, do not assume that this means that all output will also be in English. As long as Family Historian has the information recorded correctly, it should be able to output it correctly in any language. And the same applies to any fields where the possible values are constrained to a fixed list, by Family Historian.
Family Historian currently assumes that the content of any given project is all in the same language; but there is nothing to stop you from using a mixture of languages within a single project, if you wish to do so - and sometimes (particularly with notes and transcripts), there may be good reason to do that. This might mean that such text might be marked as 'untranslated' in a report, when in fact it did not need to be marked in that way (because the text was already in the output language). If this ever happens, you can switch off marking in any case, if you need to.
If you plan on working in a language other than English, you will probably want to specify the default output language to be your project language. To do this, open Preferences (last command on the Tools menu). Choose the International tab. You can choose the default language pack to use (for reports, diagrams etc) on this tab. If there is no language pack for the language you require, see How to Install a Language Pack, or How to Create a Language Pack.
See also How to Produce Reports in Different Languages.