▼
Streaming live at 10am (PST)

Language switching Button/Link that works

#1

Webflow does not support multi-lang and so we will have to do it in a rather manual way. Is there an easy way to add language switching button or links that can stay on the same content but not jumping to home of another language? by javascript or else?

My site’s primary language is English, and will have other languages like Chinese, Japanese and French. The English site is located at root, and pages of other languages are put inside folders. The site structure is as below:

( English, at root )
/ index.html
/ contact-us.html

( Chinese )
/cn/ index.html
/cn/ contact-us.html

( Japanese )
/jp/ index.html
/jp/ contact-us.html

( French )
/fr/ index.html
/fr/ contact-us.html

What I would like to achieve is:
(1) Put the language switch links on every page (as “Symbols”): ENG / 中文 / 日本語 / French
(2) When people visiting /contact-us.html and would like to view it in Japanese, they click the 日本語 link and will go to /jp/contact-us.html but not jump to /jp/index.html.

I came across this problem before and found this post, but no one was responding. So, I started this new post to better address the issue.
https://forum.webflow.com/t/language-switcher-in-javascript-localization/28076

Everyone, Webflow team, @cyberdave, @PixelGeek, @samliew, @Waldo … Any hint to handle language switching links so that changing site language will stay on the same content? A bit urgent.

Thanks a million !!!

#2

Hi, anyone could offer some hints or help?

Thanks.

#3

For what its worth you may try the solution from here. The multilanguage ability is long overdue in the WF :frowning:

#4

Looks amazing, but I think this is not a good solution for larger scale website.

Actually, I think Collection, the use of “Symbols”, and putting pages of different lang in such as “en” “jp” “cn” would be good enough for building a proper multilingual website.

The only problem frustrating me is I cannot find a way to deal with the language selection link/button.

( Cuz clientS keep requesting changing language should stay at the same content but not just jumping to “Home” of the selected language… Nightmare…)

#5

Yes, I can see how this is a hard thing to do. You will have to make pairs of pages for the two languages and then call the corresponding page on each page while pressing the switch. Someone way better than me is needed to come up with the JavaScript necessary for this.

#6

I don’t know about the javascript but I’m doing it by hand. IE adding a link to the other page for each page. For a CMS, you could add a ‘link’ field and bind it. The way you used to have to set up pagination.
A bit of a fiddle but not too much depending on how many pages you’ve got. It’s something people should be able to do themselves in the editor as well.

1 Like
#7

It is a basic function when using Wordpress plugins, such as WPML and Polylang, which allows switching language and keeping corresponding content.

A proper website should behave like this.