Translate your site

You can publish your website in more than one language. It takes two steps, and both are required: activate the language, then add it to your site. Once a site has more than one language, a language switcher appears on its own, and visitors change languages from any page. You translate the existing pages in place rather than building a separate site per language, and anything you haven't translated yet falls back to your default language. Your default language keeps the plain web addresses (/, /pricing); each additional language is served under its own prefix, such as /fr/pricing.

Add a language to your site

A language needs two things before it works on your site. Miss either one and it won't appear.

  1. Activate the language in your workspace so it becomes available to use.
  2. Add the language to your website in the website settings' language list.
  3. Save. The language now shows in the switcher, and its pages load.

The most common mistake

A language that is active but not added to your website's language list won't show in the switcher, and its pages won't load. If a new language "doesn't work," check that you did both steps above, not only the first.

How language URLs work

Your default language owns the plain web addresses: /, /about, /pricing. Every other language is served under a prefix built from its code, such as /fr/pricing or /es/pricing. There is no /en/ prefix when English is your default, because the default language has no prefix.

If you change which language is the default, the plain addresses switch to the new default and the old one moves under a prefix. Change the default before you have inbound links and search rankings, not after.

The language switcher and the tags that tell search engines which pages are translations of each other are added for you once the site has more than one language. You don't build either.

Translate a page

Pages are not duplicated per language. You translate the one page in place, and the parts you leave alone stay in the default language.

  1. Use the switcher to open the page in the language you want to translate, for example the French version.
  2. Click Edit, then turn on Translate.
  3. Replace the highlighted source text with your translation, then Save.

Untranslated text falls back to your default language. This is why a half-translated /fr/ page shows some English rather than blanks. Finish the page and the fallback disappears.

Translate menus and SEO too

Translation isn't only the body of a page. Translate these as well, or visitors in another language see them in your default language:

  • Menu labels, so navigation reads in their language.
  • The SEO title and description for each page, so the page reads well in that language's search results. See SEO & getting found.

Keep translations in sync with your source

Editing your default-language copy can strand its translations. When you rewrite a sentence in the source language, the old translation of that text goes stale and falls back to the source. Translate after your source copy is final, and re-check translations whenever you edit the original.

Remove a language

Order matters. You can't deactivate a language your site still uses.

  1. Remove the language from your website's language list first.
  2. Then deactivate it in your workspace.

Right-to-left languages

Right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew flip the text direction, and that flip is handled. A polished right-to-left layout is a design matter beyond the text direction, so ask us if you need one and we'll help.

Last reviewed: 2026-07-19

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