Change default language of a folder

support
1

Hello,

The default language of my website is English. I have a folder content/foo and I want this folder to have another default language, say French. It’s a particular case of multi language where the website is multi language, but every page is actually available in one and only one language (but it might be a different one).

Is it possible? For example, is it possible to add in the front matter something like Language = "fr"? Or is there another option?

I know I can use the multi language feature by renaming my files such as content/foo/bar.fr.md. This would work but:

  • The associated url now contains “fr” (mysite.com/fr/foo)
  • French becomes an available language even where it should not be: a menu appears to switch language (maybe this is template specific?)

Thanks a lot!

2

Edit: what is the “default language”? As in, what does that do, technically?

I’ve never used the multilingual feature in Hugo, but I imagine it works by setting templates for the different languages so they load the correct language code or soemthing, ne?

What I mean is, if you don’t need associated, overlapping pages, just write in the language you need for a given page. Any small adjustments you need to make you can do so in the appropriate template, for that section. That’s how I’d proceed. :slight_smile:

3

You can set contentDir per language, which then will be the default language for that content dir.

4

Thanks both of you.

In the Config file, we can define a DefaultContentLanguage

I agree that I can do that, but I wanted to know if I can use the template functionnalities without having to “hack” them.

I tried but failed: should i define a contentDir for every language? And lastly, is it possible to set multiple contendDir for one language?

5
  1. You can, if you want.
  2. No.
6

I’am using this way to handle multi-languages.
archetypes/default.md

YAML
---
title: "{{ replace .TranslationBaseName "-" " " | title }}"
date: "{{ .Date }}"
Lang: ""
---

layouts/_default/baseof.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang='{{ if eq .Params.Lang "" }}en{{else}}{{ .Params.Lang }}{{end}}'>
<head>...</head>
<body>...</body>
<html>
2 Likes
7

What I meant, what does it mean to you? I know what it means for Hugo, but you aren’t looking for that particular solution. @okabrionz’s does what I was thinking of:

<html lang='{{ if eq .Params.Lang "" }}en{{else}}{{ .Params.Lang }}{{end}}'>
8

Sorry for being unclear. I want to use i18n implemented in Hugo, which, if I’m getting right, is base on a “current” language. So yes, I don’t really want to change the “default language” of a folder rather than the “current language”.

Thanks for the tips! I however need to use the i18n functionnality, but I don’t know on which parameters it’s based on (I tried to hard change <html lang="fr"> in the template but i18n doesn’t care :frowning:)

Thanks!