What it is
How a site works in several languages: each version has its own URL, the language is detected from the browser, and search engines understand that it is one page in different languages, not duplicates.
How we use it
The studio site on Nuxt: Russian with no prefix, English at /en. The @nuxtjs/i18n module detects the language on the first visit and remembers the choice in a cookie, every page has hreflang, and the English texts live in a separate folder with the same file names.
Where it helps a business
- Some customers do not speak the site's main language: tourists, foreign clients.
- The English version should be found in search on its own rather than duplicate the original.
- A visitor should land on their own language straight away.
How we use it
- The studio website. Russian has no prefix, English lives at /en. The @nuxtjs/i18n module detects the language on the first visit and remembers the choice in a cookie, every page has hreflang, and the English content lives in a separate folder with the same file names and the same schema.
- «Дыхание Поволжья». RU and EN on WordPress, language from the browser and a switcher in the header. English texts are edited in the same place as the Russian ones, with "no translation" and "check translation" marks.
- A museum complex website. Foreign tourists matter only to the museum, so different areas have different numbers of languages. A translation-fix register checks the English and Chinese versions against the Russian original across 44 items.
Common problems
- Translation without review. Translation errors are found only by checking against the original; for the museum that came to 44 fixes.
- Languages as duplicates. Without hreflang a search engine may treat the versions as one page.
- More languages than needed. Every language is a set of texts to maintain.
When you do not need it
If all your customers speak one language, a second version is extra work. A language is worth adding when there is an audience searching in it.