A site in two languages: how not to create duplicates in the index

A second language version is switched on with an auto-translate button, and then people are surprised by duplicates, mixed titles and a legal text that says the wrong thing. For search these are different documents. For a person it is a promise that the page in their language is finished. An automatic widget does neither.

The minimum if there really are two languages

• Each version has its own address. A language that lives only in a cookie, with no separate page, gives search little to index.
• The pages refer to each other as versions, not as accidental translations.
• Titles, descriptions and body text are translated. A mix of two languages in one title is a common break.
• The policy, the offer and consent do not go out as machine translation without a person responsible for the meaning.
• The form and the success message speak the same language as the page.

The whole archive does not have to be translated on day one. It is more honest to translate the sections that receive traffic, and not to put a language in the menu when only the homepage is ready. An empty English storefront is worse than none: a person decides the company did not finish writing.

Lexora builds a language pair as a structure of addresses and texts, not as a widget on top of one layout. If English is needed only for one proposal, a separate page is sometimes more honest than a half-site.