I'm currently extending an Apple II emulator with proper support for various video ROMs and keyboard layouts.
I found several Apple II video ROM variants (asimov & co): French, German and UK variants. There's even a French-Canadian ROM. But was that all? Those variants seem to be all that's available on the usual download sites.
Apparently the Apple IIe was also sold in a Portuguese variant - does anyone know which video ROM were used in these? What about Spain? What about Scandinavian languages? Were there any other languages that Apple officially supported with an alternate video ROM / keyboard layout?
I found that the Apple IIe diagnostics tool supports an Italian and a Spanish language variant of the Apple IIe. So Apple clearly offered at least those.
Aren't there any Italian/Spanish users who've copied their video ROM?
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What a helpful picture!
The Language Adapter must be fairly uncommon, since James Sather apparently didn't know about it when he wrote Understanding The Apple IIe. In his book, Sather speculated that it might have been an error in the circuit design because the keyboard ROM has space for an optional keyboard layout (Dvorak on USA models), but the connection at pin 18 of the video ROM would cause video to stop working if the user tried to activate a second keyboard layout.
It looked like a mistake, but your photo reveals why it was wired that way -- there weren't enough pins at the 24-pin video ROM socket in the North American version of the //e. The European version of the //e switched to a 28-pin socket for the video ROM, so multi-language ROMs can be installed directly without the Language Adapter board. (Just like the //c.)
Apple's schematic omitted J19 (the language switch) and a few other details. When a Language Switch is attached to J19 and jumper X2 is bridged on the motherboard, the Language Switch sends an additional address bit to the video ROM socket. To make that work, the Language Adapter converts the 24-pin ROM socket into a 28-pin socket and re-routes the additional bit from pin 18 to an additional address pin on the larger video ROM.
Jumper X3 and Language Adapter.png
NB: If an Apple //e has a language switch installed at J19, with X2 bridged on the motherboard, then the computer will no longer work properly with the original 24-pin video ROM. (Without the Language Adapter, switching to Spanish would just disable a 24-pin video ROM.)