Multilingual from day one

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Retrofitting a second language is the kind of task that looks like an afternoon and turns into a weekend. Every content file needs a counterpart, every menu entry needs a translation, every data file needs a variant, and every hardcoded date format turns out to be English.

Configuring it up front costs almost nothing, even if you only ever ship one language.

 toml
 
 
defaultContentLanguage = "en"
defaultContentLanguageInSubdir = true

[languages]
 [languages.en]
 label = "English"
 weight = 1

Content files then carry their language in the filename: about.md and about.de.md sit side by side and Hugo pairs them automatically.

I18n on Liftoff

Multilingual from day one