MULTILINGUAL STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL

A single processor/storage device provides multilingual support for a computer system. Information is divided into two parts. The first part is initially stored in a first character set, e.g., the character set in which it was created. A tag, identifying the character set, is associated with the first part. The second part is stored in a universal character set. The first part is converted to another character set only when requested. Indices may be generated from the second part using specified language sorting rules.