Installation of Multiple Languages

[HansAsperger]

I have been a user of OpenOffice for some years. I am using in English.
I am wondering if I can install in other languages. There are two possible uses of multiple languages. The first is to create a document in other languages. The second is to insert something like a Japanese word into an English document. Is this possible? How can I do these?

[Hagar Delest]

You've to use (paragraph or character) styles, they carry the language information. For a detailed information, see: [Tutorial] Spell check and Language configuration.

Please add [Solved] at the beginning of the title in your first post (top of the topic) with the edit button if your issue has been fixed.

[HansAsperger]

I am not sure if I understand correctly. So let rephrase my question. Can set up two default templates: one for English and the other for Japanese or any other language other than English?

[Villeroy]

You've got to enable support for Asian languages in menu:Tools>Options>LanguageSettings>Languages. Then you can insert Japanese text without installing anything.
Documents are not Japanese or English. Spell cheking is not Japanese or English. Any portion of text can be tagged with any of the supported languages. The language is a formatting attribute just like font or color. If a text portions has been marked as Japanese, the Japanese spell checker (if you have one installed) will check this text portion. In addition, certain language specific auto-correct rules apply to specificly marked text portions. See menu:Tools>AutoCorrect.
There is also a [None] language. Text portions with this language attribute will never undergo any spell checking or language specific auto corrections.

menu:Tools>Options>LanguageSettings>Languages lets you specify the default language for brand new documents that are not derived from a template.
With option "For the current document only" you change all language attributes of the current document. You may then store the document as a Japanese or English template or document.

[Villeroy]

I have a question regarding Japanese and Chinsese. Is it possible to write (on keyboard) the right thing in wrong ways as we do in western languages? I know nothing about this written culture. I imagine that you write another thing correctly when you write the intended thing wrongly.

[migimohidarimo]

I have a question regarding Japanese and Chinsese. Is it possible to write (on keyboard) the right thing in wrong ways as we do in western languages? I know nothing about this written culture. I imagine that you write another thing correctly when you write the intended thing wrongly.

This is a very old thread but I came across it when looking for something else and as this question is not answered let me comment.

I have no experience with Chinese, but for Japanese it is much less common to make "spelling" mistakes because you enter words phonetically and then change them to appropriate characters. If your typing is inaccurate you'd normally spot it when you make that change. You are more likely to make mistakes which spell checkers won't spot (like hear/here, their/there/they're in English) but there can be times when the result is a meaningless string of characters.

Having said that, if you use a spell checker in a multi-language document, the most useful thing about tagging Japanese is to stop it showing as an error rather than to check the Japanese part of the document.