> Also See [Hugo Multilingual Part 1: Content translation](https://regisphilibert.com/blog/2018/08/hugo-multilingual-part-1-managing-content-translation/)
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 with `help` above: you will get the value `Aide` in French and `Help` in all the languages without this parameter set.
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](/getting-started/configuration/#configure-with-environment-variables):
From **Hugo 0.31** we support multiple languages in a multihost configuration. See [this issue](https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/issues/4027) for details.
With the above, the two sites will be generated into `public` with their own root:
```bash
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:
```bash
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.
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.
{{<note>}}
If a file is missing any language code, it will be assigned the default language.
{{</note>}}
### 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.
{{<code-togglefile="config">}}
languages:
en:
weight: 10
languageName: "English"
contentDir: "content/english"
nn:
weight: 20
languageName: "Français"
contentDir: "content/french"
{{</code-toggle>}}
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.
<br>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.
To localize the URLs, the [`slug`]({{< ref "/content-management/organization/index.md#slug" >}}) or [`url`]({{< ref "/content-management/organization/index.md#url" >}}) front matter param can be set in any of the non-default language file.
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`.
{{% note %}}
Page Bundle's resources follow the same language assignement logic as content files, be it by filename (`image.jpg`, `image.fr.jpg`) or by directory (`english/about/header.jpg`, `french/about/header.jpg`).
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][contenttemplate] or the [homepage][]. It will not print anything if there are no translations for a given page.
`.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:
Hugo uses [go-i18n][] to support string translations. [See the project's source repository][go-i18n-source] 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.
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:
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.
## Menus
You can define your menus for each language independently. The [creation of a menu][menus] 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 -}}
<liclass="{{ if $currentPage.IsMenuCurrent "main".}}active{{end}}">
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][config] will flag all untranslated strings with the placeholder `[i18n] identifier`, where `identifier` is the id of the missing translation.
{{% note %}}
Hugo will generate your website with these missing translation placeholders. It might not be suited for production environments.
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:
* The [`relLangURL` template function][rellangurl] or the [`absLangURL` template function][abslangurl] **OR**
* Prefixed with `{{ .LanguagePrefix }}`
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.
