Setup languages

In Sitefinity CMS, you can localize pages and content items by creating as many language versions as required. You can create different language versions independently for the frontend of your website as well as for the backend.

To open the Languages settings page:

1. In the main menu, click Administration » Settings.
   The Basic Settings page appears. 
2. Click Languages.

1. To add a new language, click Add languages….
   The Select languages dialog opens with a list of all available languages. If you want to add different language cultures, click Show cultures.
2. Select one or more languages or cultures and click Done.
   The selected languages are added under the Enabled languages for public content section.

   Each site must have at least one language - this is the language that your website opens in by default. To remove an additional language, click its respective (Delete) icon.

   IMPORTANT: Adding or removing a language initiates soft restart and database model reset operations to reflect the new language in the database schema. For more information about Sitefinity CMS application restarts, see Application restart.
   

   RECOMMENDATION: We recommend creating a backup of your database before adding languages to be able to revert the changes to the database schema.

   When you have added more than one language, the Multilingual URLs section appears.

   IMPORTANT: If you are using multisite management, the newly added language is automatically used in all existing sites, unless you explicitly configure any site to use only specific languages. For more information, see Multiple site management in multilingual mode » Adding languages to individual sites.

3. Select how the URLs of the pages will appear in each of the added languages.
   This works for both single site and multiple sites.
   Choose between the following:
   • Directories
     You use one domain and the different language versions are represented by different, automatically created directories.
     For more information about URL generation, see Language prefixes in page URLs below.
   • Different domains
     You use different domain names for each language. The system displays an input field for each language that you have added.
     • In each field, enter the respective domain name.
     • For each language, add language-specific domains for all your sites in a comma-separated list.
       EXAMPLE:
       For English, you can use a list that contains site1.domain.com, site2.domain.com, and so on.
       For German, you can use a list that contains site1.domain.de, site2.domain.de, and so on.
       The same rule applies to culture-specific domains like site1.us.domain.com, site2.us.domain.com.

     NOTE: You can use only one domain per language and site combination. For instance, it is not allowed to have both site1.domain.com and site1.domain.en correspond to the English language for Site 1.

4. Save your changes.

After you have added a language, you can translate pages and manually translate content items in this language. For more information, see Translate pages and Manually translate content and media.