Recipe: Building a Multilingual Corporate Site

This recipe guides you through setting up a professional corporate website in five or more languages. The example uses English as the default with French, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Arabic as target languages — but the same steps apply to any combination.

Planning Your Language Strategy

Before creating any translations, plan the structure of your multilingual site:

1. Identify your pages. A typical corporate site includes: Homepage, About Us, Services (with sub-pages for each service), Team, Blog, Contact, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Service
2. Prioritize languages by business need. You do not have to launch all languages at once. Start with your two highest-priority languages and add more progressively
3. Decide on content parity. Will every page be translated into every language? Or will some languages have a subset of pages? For corporate sites, we recommend full parity for core pages (Home, About, Services, Contact) and selective translation for blog posts

Phase 1: Initial Setup

1. Install and activate Lang Forge (PRO recommended for 5+ languages)
2. Go to Lang Forge > Languages and add all five target languages
3. Set the URL format to Directory (recommended for corporate SEO)
4. In the Translatable Content section, enable Pages and Posts at minimum
5. Click Save Changes
6. Go to Settings > Permalinks and click Save Changes to refresh URL rules

Phase 2: Set Up the Glossary

1. Go to Lang Forge > Glossary
2. Add your company name as a “Do Not Translate” term for all languages
3. Add product and service names with their approved translations in each language
4. Add industry-specific terms that must be translated consistently
5. This step saves significant review time later, especially when using AI translation

Phase 3: Translate Core Pages

1. Start with the Homepage:

– Click Create Translation for French

– Use AI Translate to generate the initial translation, then review and refine

– Pay extra attention to the hero headline, calls to action, and any marketing copy

– Publish when satisfied

– Repeat for German, Spanish, Japanese, and Arabic

1. Translate the About Us page using the same process
2. Translate Services pages. If you have multiple service sub-pages, translate the main Services landing page first, then each sub-page
3. Translate the Contact page. Verify that contact form labels are translated (if using Form Forge, the form fields are translatable through the Lang Forge integration)
4. Translate Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. For legal pages, consider having translations reviewed by a native speaker or legal professional rather than relying solely on AI

Phase 4: Create Language-Specific Menus

1. Go to Appearance > Menus
2. Create a new menu called “Main Menu – French”
3. Add the French translations of each page to this menu in the correct order
4. Assign it to the Primary Menu – French location
5. Save and repeat for each language
6. For the footer menu, create separate footer menus per language as well
7. If your site has multiple menu locations (header, footer, sidebar), create a translated menu for each location in each language

Phase 5: Add the Language Switcher

1. Decide on switcher placement. For corporate sites, the most common placement is the top-right corner of the header
2. Add the Lang Forge Language Switcher as a menu item in your main navigation:

– Find the Lang Forge panel on the left and add the Language Switcher

– Position it as the last item in the menu

1. Configure the switcher style. For a corporate site with 5+ languages, a dropdown style works best because it saves horizontal space
2. If your theme supports a secondary header widget area, you can also add the switcher widget there with flags for a more visual appearance

Phase 6: Translate Blog Content

1. Decide which blog posts to translate. For a corporate blog, translate:

– Product announcements relevant to international audiences

– Case studies featuring clients in each language’s region

1. Use Lang Forge > Translation Status to track which posts are translated per language
2. For efficiency, use the Duplicate + AI Translate feature to translate a batch of posts at once, then review and publish selectively

Phase 7: Configure SEO for Each Language

1. If you use SEO Forge or Yoast SEO, translate the SEO title and meta description for every page. These are included in the Lang Forge translation workflow automatically
2. Submit the hreflang sitemap (/sitemap-hreflang.xml) to Google Search Console
3. If your target audiences are in specific countries, configure Search Console’s geographic targeting for each language subdirectory
4. Verify hreflang tags by viewing the page source of any translated page and confirming the tags list all language versions

Phase 8: Handle Right-to-Left Languages

1. If you added Arabic, Hebrew, or another RTL language, Lang Forge automatically sets the dir="rtl" attribute on translated pages
2. Check your theme’s RTL support: most modern themes include RTL stylesheets. If text alignment, margins, or padding look incorrect in RTL languages, you may need to adjust your theme’s CSS
3. Test the RTL version thoroughly, especially navigation menus, forms, and sidebar layouts

Phase 9: Launch and Ongoing Maintenance

1. Review all translated pages one final time before announcing the multilingual site
2. Publish all completed translations
3. Add links to the multilingual site in your marketing materials, email signatures, and social media profiles
4. Set up Content Diff notifications (PRO) so your translation team is alerted whenever an original page is updated
5. Check the Lang Forge > Analytics dashboard weekly to monitor translation coverage and identify content that needs updating

> Tip: For corporate sites, assign each language to a specific team member or translator. Use the Translator role in Lang Forge to give them access to only their assigned language, reducing the chance of accidental edits to other languages.

> Good to know: When you add a new page to the site in your default language, it does not automatically get translated. Set up a content workflow where every new page creation triggers a translation task for all active languages. The Content Diff email notifications help by alerting your team, but the initial translation of new pages requires manual initiation.

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