Content Management Systems for Multi-Language Sites

While it would make it easy for the world if everyone just spoke one language, it definitely won't be as fun. 

And because we love fun, we should embrace the world's multiculturalism and build solutions to support multilingual sites that allow brands to go beyond their home borders. 

And while having a one language website is ok if your ambition is contained within the borders of that language but for most businesses looking to build an international business, a multilingual site is the key to success.

Multilingual sites deliver a far more personalized experience to the end visitor. It shows that the business values the uniqueness of each target market and wants to serve it in the best possible way.

How to choose a CMS that supports different languages

Managing multilingual websites can appear like a massive task and it is. 

Keeping track of what is translating in what language and creating localized content for personalized experience is a full time job. 

This why choosing the right platform to support your content management strategy is crucial to guarantee success. 

You will need to pick your multilingual content management system depending on the kinds of content you have, the platforms you're leveraging, and the different languages you wish to start localizing in. 

While there are multiple types of CMSs out there, we strongly believe that a headless or hybrid CMS (content management system) is the right way to go. 

The reason? Headless CMS multilingual websites are future-proof and allow you to create omnichannel and localized experiences from one platform. 

You are not yet thinking about omnichannel. It is still the right solution just because it will accomodate any change in strategy for your business and will scale with it. 

Headless and hybrid CMS have the ability to make content creation and management for multilingual websites more straightforward than when using traditional platforms. 

A headless CMS is a software user interface that supports content authoring instead of attaching it to a specific output, such as web page rendering. Instead, it delivers content as data through an API.

1 - The CMS you choose should already have multilingual support embedded into the admin features. It shouldn't require developers to build ad hoc multilingual content types as a hack or require third-party plugins to deliver the appropriate content.

2 - You should be able to tell which material has been translated and which has not, and you should be able to direct users to the translated content they need. With complete Unicode support, the CMS can display, edit, and modify any language properly.

3 - Determine how content is handled: Is it separate, or is it linked by language? Your localization-ready CMS should not just duplicate content and translate it. Instead, it should allow you to customize content for each folder so it can be genuinely localized and altered for any market, language, or region.

4- The API constructs should already have provisioning for language in their features. It should be constructed so that you and your translation partner can simply manage your content and push online material through an API connection or CMS connector without copying and pasting or exporting and importing source and translated content.

We built Core dna with native localization features. Uberall (one of Core dna's partnerships) exhibits this below:

How to manage a multi-language CMS for your website

A multilingual content management system provides flexibility to structure the taxonomy of the content of your multilingual website in such a way the multiple languages can be incorporated seamlessly and without trouble. 

The workflows built into a headless Content management system enable you to process content or use external systems and services to process the content into the various languages, giving you the ability to share information easily in any language.

Headless / Hybrid platforms also provide built-in user administration in two places that simplify translation and multilingual content processing.

The key to supporting multiple languages is built-in support from the platform itself. You can produce and distribute content for a single locale's audience with a localization-ready CMS. This helps your company become genuinely global.

While proper translation is crucial, a localization-ready CMS is critical due to the wide range of cultural and language variances. 

In addition, a localization-ready CMS ensures that language is dealt with appropriately and doesn't interfere with the content layout or content delivery.

There must be support within the admin to recognize that the headless APIs can return information in a different language. 

The translation will happen either through the API process or through workflows. Workflows within a headless CMS can drive content quality with staging sites and testing.

Here are a few tips to increase the overall user experience and ease of use on your headless CMS multilingual site:

• Creating fields to represent different languages should not be used to support multilingualism. Ensure that the layouts and components maintain integrity for whatever content you are showing.
• The use of tags is also another hack that should be avoided, as this complicates the taxonomy of your content.
• Third-party plugins can also be problematic. External products require management and maintenance. They often break from time to time and require upkeep.