I am not certain how or why this version got the number "3.2". Internally (to programs such as MSD) it identifies itself as "Windows 3.1" but on all visible text and documentation the version number is "3.2".

This version is a Chinese translation of Windows 3.1 and, except for what appears to be some font related stuff, includes only what Windows 3.1 has. Still, it is somewhat interesting and deserves some screen shots.

As far as I can tell there was never a "Windows 3.2" in any other language, and I can not find much information about this version.  Normally version names / numbers of Windows are the same for alternate languages. For example there are many other language versions of Windows 3.1 and there is currently a Chinese version of Windows XP.

This version of Windows is not to be confused with "WIN32" (win thirty-two), the API set used by Windows 95/NT or the WIN32 API subset add-on for Windows 3.1.

The "Windows 3.2" boot screen.

The Windows 3.2 about box.

Normal Windows applications can usually be converted to other languages without even having to touch the applications source code or re-compiling. Text strings, graphics, icons, cursors, and dialog boxes are normally stored in "resources" in the executable that can be edited using a "resource editor" (macintosh applications are also like this). Early versions of Windows were limited to 8-bit ascii characters with enough international characters to use languages with similar alphabets such as spanish or french. Newer versions of Windows use a more extensible text format called Unicode.

As this picture shows Windows 3.2 comes with all the utilities that that Windows 3.1 has, plus a couple of font related utilities.

With few exceptions all text in the applications and documentation have been translated to "simplified Chinese".

Similarly it has all the same control panel items although a couple of the icons are different.

Oh, yes it has mine sweeper too.

All help files have been translated. Note that in the menus it still uses english keyboard shortcuts.

English programs have no problem running under this version of Windows as this example shows.

This kind of demonstrates how important text is to graphical applications. Unless you can read Chinese you would have a very hard time figuring out what all this stuff does.

Here is what it does: it's the marquee screen saver.

This is a font editor used for adding new Chinese characters to the existing fonts. Any added characters, however, can only be used on the local computer.

In Windows 3.2 users can hit multiple keys on a "QWERTY" style keyboard to generate a large possible number of Chinese characters. There are several layout standards for this, and this utility lets the user customize the layout.

Exiting windows 3.2.