Have you ever wondered how Chinese type?  Have you ever wondered how websites in Arabic are possible?  It used to be through expensive software.  But now the language tools for many different languages come built-in with Windows Vista, all you must do is activate them.  Activating languages on Vista is a snap; as with almost every setting, you’ll find the controls in the ‘Control Panel.’  Open the control panel and click the ‘Regional and Language Options’ icon, then click the ‘Keyboards and Languages’ tab.  Click on ‘Change Keyboards’ to bring up the list of available languages.

Windows Vista allows users to type in a variety of languages

To activate a language, click on the ‘add’ button to the right of the new window, a list of languages will appear.  Find the language (or languages) that you want to add to your computer, then double click it to expand the list of input options.  Check the different methods of input that suit you best.  Repeat for each language you want to activate.  When you are finished, click the ‘OK’ button to close the list of languages, and click ‘OK’ to in the language settings window to save your changes and close it too.  Now you just need to switch your computer to type that language instead of English.  First, open the program you want to type in.  There should now be a new button near your computer’s clock, in the lower-right corner of your screen that says ‘EN’ on it.

Switch between languages at your convenience

Next, click the button, and select the language you want to type in.  The language abbreviation should change from EN to the language you are typing (i.e. CH if you are typing Chinese).