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Overview of a multilingual site

A multilingual site consists of content that is localized to support multiple audiences with different languages. Your multilingual site consists of a set of localized and regionalized subsites, including a single base site.

Types of sites

  • The base site

    • The base site defines the site structure and contains the shared content that is translated.
    • Some base sites are continually updated, and fresh translations are made.
    • Other base sites are created once, and used as templates for new sites in other languages.

  • Translated sites

    • In most cases, the entire content and structure of a base site are replicated to a translated site.
    • In some cases, only a subset of the original base site is reused on the translated site.

  • Regional sites

    • A regional site is similar to a translated site, but involves no translation.
    • Regional sites reuse content from a base site, but the content is updated for each region. For example, different states in a single country.

  • Translated Regional Sites

    • These types of sites both reuse and update content from a base site, but also translates the updated content.

  • No base-locale sites

    • In this type of site, content is written separately in different sites for different languages, but then synchronized and translated to all the sites and languages.

  • Mixed language sites

    • This type of site includes content that is written in multiple languages, but stored in a single site.
    • Content is grouped by category, not language.