CONTENT MANAGEMENT

Multilingual Mode

You should define the available languages in a languages section in your site configuration.

Also See Hugo Multilingual Part 1: Content translation

Configure Languages

The following is an example of a site configuration for a multilingual Hugo project:

config.
     
DefaultContentLanguage: en
copyright: Everything is mine
languages:
  en:
    params:
      linkedin: https://linkedin.com/whoever
    title: My blog
    weight: 1
  fr:
    params:
      linkedin: https://linkedin.com/fr/whoever
      navigation:
        help: Aide
    title: Mon blogue
    weight: 2
params:
  navigation:
    help: Help

DefaultContentLanguage = "en"
copyright = "Everything is mine"

[languages]
  [languages.en]
    title = "My blog"
    weight = 1
    [languages.en.params]
      linkedin = "https://linkedin.com/whoever"
  [languages.fr]
    title = "Mon blogue"
    weight = 2
    [languages.fr.params]
      linkedin = "https://linkedin.com/fr/whoever"
      [languages.fr.params.navigation]
        help = "Aide"

[params]
  [params.navigation]
    help = "Help"

{
   "DefaultContentLanguage": "en",
   "copyright": "Everything is mine",
   "languages": {
      "en": {
         "params": {
            "linkedin": "https://linkedin.com/whoever"
         },
         "title": "My blog",
         "weight": 1
      },
      "fr": {
         "params": {
            "linkedin": "https://linkedin.com/fr/whoever",
            "navigation": {
               "help": "Aide"
            }
         },
         "title": "Mon blogue",
         "weight": 2
      }
   },
   "params": {
      "navigation": {
         "help": "Help"
      }
   }
}

Anything not defined in a [languages] block will fall back to the global value for that key (e.g., copyright for the English [en] language). This also works for params, as demonstrated witgh help above: You will get the value Aide in French and Help in all the languages without this parameter set.

With the configuration above, all content, sitemap, RSS feeds, paginations, and taxonomy pages will be rendered below / in English (your default content language) and then below /fr in French.

When working with front matter Params in single page templates, omit the params in the key for the translation.

defaultContentLanguage sets the project’s default language. If not set, the default language will be en.

If the default language needs to be rendererd below its own language code (/en) like the others, set defaultContentLanguageInSubdir: true.

Only the obvious non-global options can be overridden per language. Examples of global options are baseURL, buildDrafts, etc.

Disable a Language

You can disable one or more languages. This can be useful when working on a new translation.

disableLanguages = ["fr", "ja"]

Note that you cannot disable the default content language.

We kept this as a standalone setting to make it easier to set via OS environment:

HUGO_DISABLELANGUAGES="fr ja" hugo

If you have already a list of disabled languages in config.toml, you can enable them in development like this:

HUGO_DISABLELANGUAGES=" " hugo server

Configure Multilingual Multihost

From Hugo 0.31 we support multiple languages in a multihost configuration. See this issue for details.

This means that you can now configure a baseURL per language:

If a baseURL is set on the language level, then all languages must have one and they must all be different.

Example:

config.
     
languages:
  en:
    baseURL: https://example.com
    languageName: English
    title: In English
    weight: 2
  fr:
    baseURL: https://example.fr
    languageName: Français
    title: En Français
    weight: 1

[languages]
  [languages.en]
    baseURL = "https://example.com"
    languageName = "English"
    title = "In English"
    weight = 2
  [languages.fr]
    baseURL = "https://example.fr"
    languageName = "Français"
    title = "En Français"
    weight = 1

{
   "languages": {
      "en": {
         "baseURL": "https://example.com",
         "languageName": "English",
         "title": "In English",
         "weight": 2
      },
      "fr": {
         "baseURL": "https://example.fr",
         "languageName": "Français",
         "title": "En Français",
         "weight": 1
      }
   }
}

With the above, the two sites will be generated into public with their own root:

public
├── en
└── no

All URLs (i.e .Permalink etc.) will be generated from that root. So the English home page above will have its .Permalink set to https://example.com/.

When you run hugo server we will start multiple HTTP servers. You will typlically see something like this in the console:

Web Server is available at 127.0.0.1:1313 (bind address 127.0.0.1)
Web Server is available at 127.0.0.1:1314 (bind address 127.0.0.1)
Press Ctrl+C to stop

Live reload and --navigateToChanged between the servers work as expected.

Taxonomies and Blackfriday

Taxonomies and Blackfriday configuration can also be set per language:

config.
     
Taxonomies:
  tag: tags
blackfriday:
  angledQuotes: true
  hrefTargetBlank: true
languages:
  en:
    blackfriday:
      angledQuotes: false
    title: English
    weight: 1
  fr:
    Taxonomies:
      plaque: plaques
    title: Français
    weight: 2

[Taxonomies]
  tag = "tags"

[blackfriday]
  angledQuotes = true
  hrefTargetBlank = true

[languages]
  [languages.en]
    title = "English"
    weight = 1
    [languages.en.blackfriday]
      angledQuotes = false
  [languages.fr]
    title = "Français"
    weight = 2
    [languages.fr.Taxonomies]
      plaque = "plaques"

{
   "Taxonomies": {
      "tag": "tags"
   },
   "blackfriday": {
      "angledQuotes": true,
      "hrefTargetBlank": true
   },
   "languages": {
      "en": {
         "blackfriday": {
            "angledQuotes": false
         },
         "title": "English",
         "weight": 1
      },
      "fr": {
         "Taxonomies": {
            "plaque": "plaques"
         },
         "title": "Français",
         "weight": 2
      }
   }
}

Translate Your Content

There are two ways to manage your content translation, both ensures each page is assigned a language and linked to its translations.

Translation by filename

Considering the following example:

  1. /content/about.en.md
  2. /content/about.fr.md

The first file is assigned the english language and linked to the second. The second file is assigned the french language and linked to the first.

Their language is assigned according to the language code added as suffix to the filename.

By having the same path and base filename, the content pieces are linked together as translated pages.

Translation by content directory

This system uses different content directories for each of the languages. Each language’s content directory is set using the contentDir param.

config.
     
languages:
  en:
    contentDir: content/english
    languageName: English
    weight: 10
  nn:
    contentDir: content/french
    languageName: Français
    weight: 20

[languages]
  [languages.en]
    contentDir = "content/english"
    languageName = "English"
    weight = 10
  [languages.nn]
    contentDir = "content/french"
    languageName = "Français"
    weight = 20

{
   "languages": {
      "en": {
         "contentDir": "content/english",
         "languageName": "English",
         "weight": 10
      },
      "nn": {
         "contentDir": "content/french",
         "languageName": "Français",
         "weight": 20
      }
   }
}

The value of contentDir can be any valid path, even absolute path references. The only restriction is that the content directories cannot overlap.

Considering the following example in conjunction with the configuration above:

  1. /content/english/about.md
  2. /content/french/about.md

The first file is assigned the english language and is linked to the second.
The second file is assigned the french language and is linked to the first.

Their language is assigned according to the content directory they are placed in.

By having the same path and basename (relative to their language content directory), the content pieces are linked together as translated pages.

Bypassing default linking.

Any pages sharing the same translationKey set in front matter will be linked as translated pages regardless of basename or location.

Considering the following example:

  1. /content/about-us.en.md
  2. /content/om.nn.md
  3. /content/presentation/a-propos.fr.md
# set in all three pages
translationKey: "about"

By setting the translationKey front matter param to about in all three pages, they will be linked as translated pages.

Because paths and filenames are used to handle linking, all translated pages, except for the language part, will be sharing the same url.

To localize the URLs, the slug or url front matter param can be set in any of the non-default language file.

For example, a french translation (content/about.fr.md) can have its own localized slug.

     
Title: A Propos
slug: a-propos

Title = "A Propos"
slug = "a-propos"

{
   "Title": "A Propos",
   "slug": "a-propos"
}

At render, Hugo will build both /about/ and fr/a-propos/ while maintaning their translation linking.

Page Bundles

To avoid the burden of having to duplicate files, each Page Bundle inherits the resources of its linked translated pages’ bundles except for the content files (markdown files, html files etc…).

Therefore, from within a template, the page will have access to the files from all linked pages’ bundles.

If, across the linked bundles, two or more files share the same basenname, only one will be included and chosen as follows:

  • File from current language Bundle, if present.
  • First file found across bundles by order of language Weight.

Reference the Translated Content

To create a list of links to translated content, use a template similar to the following:

layouts/partials/i18nlist.html

{{ if .IsTranslated }}
<h4>{{ i18n "translations" }}</h4>
<ul>
    {{ range .Translations }}
    <li>
        <a href="{{ .Permalink }}">{{ .Lang }}: {{ .Title }}{{ if .IsPage }} ({{ i18n "wordCount" . }}){{ end }}</a>
    </li>
    {{ end}}
</ul>
{{ end }}

The above can be put in a partial (i.e., inside layouts/partials/) and included in any template, be it for a single content page or the homepage. It will not print anything if there are no translations for a given page.

The above also uses the i18n function described in the next section.

List All Available Languages

.AllTranslations on a Page can be used to list all translations, including itself. Called on the home page it can be used to build a language navigator:

layouts/partials/allLanguages.html

<ul>
{{ range $.Site.Home.AllTranslations }}
<li><a href="{{ .Permalink }}">{{ .Language.LanguageName }}</a></li>
{{ end }}
</ul>

Translation of Strings

Hugo uses go-i18n to support string translations. See the project’s source repository to find tools that will help you manage your translation workflows.

Translations are collected from the themes/<THEME>/i18n/ folder (built into the theme), as well as translations present in i18n/ at the root of your project. In the i18n, the translations will be merged and take precedence over what is in the theme folder. Language files should be named according to RFC 5646 with names such as en-US.toml, fr.toml, etc.

From within your templates, use the i18n function like this:

{{ i18n "home" }}

This uses a definition like this one in i18n/en-US.toml:

[home]
other = "Home"

Often you will want to use to the page variables in the translations strings. To do that, pass on the “.” context when calling i18n:

{{ i18n "wordCount" . }}

This uses a definition like this one in i18n/en-US.toml:

[wordCount]
other = "This article has {{ .WordCount }} words."

An example of singular and plural form:

[readingTime]
one = "One minute read"
other = "{{.Count}} minutes read"

And then in the template:

{{ i18n "readingTime" .ReadingTime }}

Customize Dates

At the time of this writing, Go does not yet have support for internationalized locales, but if you do some work, you can simulate it. For example, if you want to use French month names, you can add a data file like data/mois.yaml with this content:

1: "janvier"
2: "février"
3: "mars"
4: "avril"
5: "mai"
6: "juin"
7: "juillet"
8: "août"
9: "septembre"
10: "octobre"
11: "novembre"
12: "décembre"

… then index the non-English date names in your templates like so:

<time class="post-date" datetime="{{ .Date.Format "2006-01-02T15:04:05Z07:00" | safeHTML }}">
  Article publié le {{ .Date.Day }} {{ index $.Site.Data.mois (printf "%d" .Date.Month) }} {{ .Date.Year }} (dernière modification le {{ .Lastmod.Day }} {{ index $.Site.Data.mois (printf "%d" .Lastmod.Month) }} {{ .Lastmod.Year }})
</time>

This technique extracts the day, month and year by specifying .Date.Day, .Date.Month, and .Date.Year, and uses the month number as a key, when indexing the month name data file.

You can define your menus for each language independently. The creation of a menu works analogous to earlier versions of Hugo, except that they have to be defined in their language-specific block in the configuration file:

defaultContentLanguage = "en"

[languages.en]
weight = 0
languageName = "English"

[[languages.en.menu.main]]
url    = "/"
name   = "Home"
weight = 0


[languages.de]
weight = 10
languageName = "Deutsch"

[[languages.de.menu.main]]
url    = "/"
name   = "Startseite"
weight = 0

The rendering of the main navigation works as usual. .Site.Menus will just contain the menu of the current language. Pay attention to the generation of the menu links. absLangURL takes care that you link to the correct locale of your website. Otherwise, both menu entries would link to the English version as the default content language that resides in the root directory.

<ul>
    {{- $currentPage := . -}}
    {{ range .Site.Menus.main -}}
    <li class="{{ if $currentPage.IsMenuCurrent "main" . }}active{{ end }}">
        <a href="{{ .URL | absLangURL }}">{{ .Name }}</a>
    </li>
    {{- end }}
</ul>

Missing Translations

If a string does not have a translation for the current language, Hugo will use the value from the default language. If no default value is set, an empty string will be shown.

While translating a Hugo website, it can be handy to have a visual indicator of missing translations. The enableMissingTranslationPlaceholders configuration option will flag all untranslated strings with the placeholder [i18n] identifier, where identifier is the id of the missing translation.

For merging of content from other languages (i.e. missing content translations), see lang.Merge.

To track down missing translation strings, run Hugo with the --i18n-warnings flag:

 hugo --i18n-warnings | grep i18n
i18n|MISSING_TRANSLATION|en|wordCount

Multilingual Themes support

To support Multilingual mode in your themes, some considerations must be taken for the URLs in the templates. If there is more than one language, URLs must meet the following criteria:

If there is more than one language defined, the LanguagePrefix variable will equal /en (or whatever your CurrentLanguage is). If not enabled, it will be an empty string and is therefore harmless for single-language Hugo websites.

See Also

“Multilingual Mode” was last updated: January 29, 2019: A little bit of naming reorganisation (8fb631a0)
Improve this page