⌘Multilingual sites in practice

Only if you have a specific target group — not to look international.

Worthwhile:

• You actually have customers or applicants who do not speak German.
• You work near a border or export.
• You are recruiting skilled workers from abroad.

Not worthwhile:

• “So that it looks more professional.”
• If nobody in the business speaks the language — then you cannot reply to an enquiry.

The last one is the decisive one: an English website generates English enquiries. If nobody can answer them, you have a problem instead of an opportunity.

And be honest in your calculations: a second language doubles the maintenance, permanently.

About twice the maintenance, and the effort does not come at the start but over years.

What has to be done twice every time:

• Every text change.
• Every new post.
• Every price change.
• Every change of date.
• Every legal adjustment.

What does not have to be done twice: images, design, structure.

The typical course of events you want to avoid: the second language is translated during set-up and then no longer maintained. After a year it shows a different price, a different contact person and yesterday’s opening hours.

That is worse than having no second language — it says that someone started here and gave up.

Yes — and for many that is a better solution than a complete second version.

What lends itself to this:

• A single page in the second language that says the essentials: what you do, for whom, how to reach you.
• The contact page, so that an enquiry is possible.
• Nothing more.

That is honest, easy to maintain and answers the question that someone who does not speak your language has.

What you should do: say that it is meant this way. A sentence such as “This page summarises our services in English. For details, please get in touch” prevents the impression that the translation was left unfinished.

And the language switcher should then only appear where there is a counterpart.

Finish the German version first, then translate. Anything else leads to double work.

The procedure:

1. German page complete, checked, published.
2. Create the second language.
3. Translate — page by page, not paragraph by paragraph.
4. Have it proofread by someone who speaks the language.
5. Publish.

If you work in parallel, you maintain every change twice and at some point forget one. And the forgotten one is always in the language you do not speak yourself.

What you should do before translating: check the German texts for translatability — short sentences, no idioms, no text in images.

Graded by importance:

1. A person who speaks the language as their mother tongue and understands your business. For the pages that matter.
2. A person who speaks the language well. For the rest.
3. AI as a rough draft that a person proofreads.
4. Automatic translation without proofreading — only if you do not care how it comes across.

Why level 4 is problematic: machine translations are usually grammatically correct and often wrong in tone. What sounds polite in German comes across as long-winded or impolite when translated literally.

Legal texts do not belong in level 3 or 4. The legal notice and privacy notice must be correct in each version, not just understandable.

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If your site is aimed at a target group in that language: yes.

The required details must be understandable to the people they are addressed to. An English website with a legal notice (Impressum) only in German does not fulfil this purpose.

What to bear in mind:

• Do not just translate, have it checked. Legal terms have no automatic equivalent in other languages.
• Keep both versions up to date. A privacy notice changed in only one language is half a breach.
• State which version is authoritative, if they could differ.

What is often done in practice and is risky: leaving the legal notice in German only and hoping that is enough.

For a site aimed at another country, obligations there may apply in addition.

With a language code in the path — for example /en/leistungen alongside /leistungen.

What matters about this:

• Each version has its own address. That is the prerequisite for search engines finding both and showing them to the right target group.
• The structure stays the same. Anyone who knows the German page finds the English one in the same place.
• Addresses do not change through translation — the path usually stays the same; only the code is added.

What you should bear in mind: if a page does not exist in the second language, the switcher leads nowhere. Check this every time you create a new German page.

And for search engines: the mapping of the language versions to each other is set — you do not need to do anything.

In one place, the same on every page — usual places are top right in the header or at the very bottom.

What you should bear in mind:

• Only add it once there is a second language. A switcher with one language is confusing.
• Language names instead of flags. A flag stands for a country, not a language, and for many languages there is no suitable one.
• Switch to the corresponding page, not to the home page. Someone switching on the services page wants the services page.

The last item in the list is the one most often poorly solved, and the one that annoys visitors most.

If a page is missing in the second language: then the switcher does not lead there. That is better than a dead link.

With one rule and one date:

The rule: every change is made in both versions — directly one after the other, not “later”.

The date: once a quarter, go through both versions side by side. Twenty minutes.

What drifts apart in particular:

• Prices. Changed in the main language and forgotten in the second.
• Opening hours and contact details.
• Events.
• New pages that exist in only one language.

What helps: a list of which pages exist in which language. With twenty pages, that is a table with twenty rows — and it shows immediately where something is missing.

And if you notice that you are not managing: reduce the second language to what you can maintain.

That is the foreseeable consequence of a foreign-language site, and it should have been considered beforehand.

Your options:

• Reply honestly, in English or German if need be: “We are happy to help — we correspond in German or English.”
• Use a translation aid to understand what it is about. For the reply, the same applies as for texts: have it proofread where it matters.
• Say on the site which languages you communicate in. That spares both sides disappointment.

What you should not do: not reply. An unanswered enquiry is worse than a reply in the wrong language.

And if it happens more and more: that is a signal that the second language is working — then it is worth having someone who can reply.

Yes, if both have addresses of their own and the mapping is set — both are the case.

What that means in practice:

• Each version is found for its language. An English page appears for English searches.
• They do not compete with each other. The mapping tells search engines that it is the same page in another language.

What you should bear in mind:

• Translate titles and descriptions too, not just the body text. They are what appears in the results list.
• Search terms cannot be translated literally. What people search for in English is not the translation of the German term — check this if it matters to you.

And the realistic expectation: a second language version takes just as long to be found as the first.

That is possible — but it leaves traces you should take care of.

What happens:

• The pages in that language disappear. All addresses with the language code lead nowhere.
• Search engines still have them in their index and continue to show them for weeks.
• Links from outside lead to nothing.

What you should do:

1. Redirects from the addresses being dropped to the corresponding page in the remaining language.
2. Remove the switcher.
3. Check whether the text anywhere refers to the other version.

And the more honest middle way: reduce rather than remove. A single page in the second language that says the essentials is easy to maintain and better than nothing.