Localization and content translation

feature
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It is not clear what is the status of localization in Hugo.
I can’t find in the docs any mention to the use of languageCode in the config file. I tried to change its value to “it” in my config.toml but it didn’t bring any change. Sections are still “pluralized” with -s
Also, I see that date formats in other languages are not supported, but it’s due to go not supporting them yet:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/hugo-discuss/languageCode/hugo-discuss/qCCgvbkJMXc/NdOANi_iZi8J

A different matter is the ability of handle the translation of content. I can guess from the examples/multilingual directory and by reading issue 129 that it is somewhat possible.

But I still see feature requests as issue 477.

I think that the documentation should clarify these two different but related topics.
Thanks

2 Likes
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languageCode is only used to set the languageCode field in the RSS feeds.

Currently Hugo doesn’t have any direct support for localization, however many people run Hugo with a variety of different languages without issues.

What doesn’t work

Sections us a naive pluralization class. We really need to abandon it and allow the end user to provide plural & singular like we do for taxonomies.

Go dates don’t have support for word renderings other than English today. Hugo inherits this limitation.

What works

Full unicode support…everywhere.
Fully configurable Urls.
Super flexible metadata and path structure
Numeric rendering of dates works regardless of language.
RSS support for different languages (even multiple languages per site).

As far as I’m aware other than the two limitations mentioned, it’s very easy and straightforward to make a multilingual site in Hugo. One of the limitations will be removed soon. The other likely won’t be fixed anytime soon, though it’s fairly easy to work around.

Hugo itself doesn’t provide any explicit multilingual capabilities, but provides one all the tools that they would need to build a multilingual site.

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I’m also much interested in this. I think the biggest thing missing is some mention in the doc. If I’ll be able to setup a site with this feature, I’ll create a pull request to improve the doc, if no-one will do it before me.

Thanks a lot for the awesome job and I really hope Hugo will continue to go this fast and that soon we will see a lot more new features :slight_smile: