Multilingual sites

Publish a site in several languages, link translations, translate strings with i18n files, and serve languages from one host or several.

Languages#

config.toml
defaultContentLanguage = "en"
[languages]
  [languages.en]
    languageName = "English"
    weight = 1
  [languages.th]
    languageName = "ไทย"
    languageCode = "th-TH"
    title = "ตัวอย่าง"
    weight = 2
    [languages.th.params]
      subtitle = "เว็บไซต์ตัวอย่าง"

config.yaml
defaultContentLanguage: en
languages:
  en:
    languageName: English
    weight: 1
  th:
    languageCode: th-TH
    languageName: ไทย
    params:
      subtitle: เว็บไซต์ตัวอย่าง
    title: ตัวอย่าง
    weight: 2

config.json
{
   "defaultContentLanguage": "en",
   "languages": {
      "en": {
         "languageName": "English",
         "weight": 1
      },
      "th": {
         "languageCode": "th-TH",
         "languageName": "ไทย",
         "params": {
            "subtitle": "เว็บไซต์ตัวอย่าง"
         },
         "title": "ตัวอย่าง",
         "weight": 2
      }
   }
}

The default language is published at the root (/about/), the others under their key (/th/about/). defaultContentLanguageInSubdir = true puts the default language under /en/ too. disableLanguages = ["th"] leaves a language out of the build.

A language’s table may set the site’s settings for that language: title, params, menus, baseURL, contentDir, languageDirection (rtl) and others.

Translate content#

By file name: about.md and about.th.md are the English and Thai versions of one page.
By directory: Give each language its own contentDir (content/en, content/th); files with the same path are translations.
By key: Pages with the same translationKey in front matter are translations, whatever their paths.

A page in only one language exists only in that language. Link the translations:

html
{% if page.is_translated %}
  <ul class="languages">
    {% for t in page.translations %}
      <li><a href="{{ t.rel_permalink }}" hreflang="{{ t.lang }}">{{ t.language.name }}</a></li>
    {% endfor %}
  </ul>
{% endif %}

Translate strings#

Put the theme’s strings in i18n/<lang>.toml (or YAML, JSON):

i18n/th.toml
[read_more]
other = "อ่านต่อ"

[minutes]
one = "{{ .Count }} นาที"
other = "{{ .Count }} นาที"

html

{{ i18n(key="read_more") }}
{{ i18n(key="minutes", count=page.reading_time) }}

A missing translation falls back to the default language’s text, else is empty; enableMissingTranslationPlaceholders = true shows [i18n] key instead, so missing keys stand out.

URLs and dates#

rel_lang_url and abs_lang_url add the language prefix to a path. Dates and numbers format in the page’s language: page.date | date(style="long") is “2 ตุลาคม 2026” on a Thai page, and 1234.5 | format_number(precision=1) writes the language’s separators.

Several hosts#

Give each language its own baseURL to serve it from its own host (example.org, example.th): fugo writes each language to its own directory under public/.