How to build multilingual Wix blog (with videos)

I thought there had to be a translate button on each post. But I was disappointed.

I could not find that button anywhere. Even after the whole hour of research. My initial plan to translate blog posts to another language was a total failure.

I didn’t give up. My alternative solution isn’t perfect, but acceptable. In order to make your Wix blog multilingual, you must use Wix blog categories. Specifically, you create a category for each language. Then create a new blog post in a different language and assign the proper language category. When the user selects a language, your blog only displays the posts in the same language category.

You may find that explanation confusing. But worry not! It will become clear after you try out the tutorial below.

1. Add new language to a website

The very first task is to add another language to your website. The instruction below will show you how. 

Steps to add new language to Wix site

1. Click Settings menu in the Editor
2. Click Multilingual
3. Click + Add Language

By default, the language you have just added is hidden. If you publish your site right now, you won’t see it. When you finish the translation, you can make it visible. The instruction is below.

Steps to display new language page

1. Click the Switch Languages button
2. Click Manage Languages
3. Switch from Hidden to Visible on the new language 

2. Build multilingual Wix blog

Currently Wix doesn’t support blog translation. That means you must put the translation of your blog post to another post. Now your blog is a cocktail of posts in different languages. Very messy!

You clean the mess by using the blog categories. Basically, when a user clicks on English blog, they should only see the posts in English. Similarly, only the Japanese posts are displayed when someone clicks on Japanese blog.

2.1. Create and assign blog language category 

On the blog menu in Wix Dashboard, you will find the Categories option. Clicking it will take you to your blog category screen. Now you can add a language category. Later on, you assign the categories to your posts. You will see the process in the video below.

If you have no idea about the Wix blog categories, click this link to learn about it. It is very easy. 

2.2. Create custom blog page for each language category

Custom blog pages?! Why not the main blog page? 

Wix doesn’t allow you to select the category on the main blog page. The main blog page displays all posts in all categories. 

The custom blog page does allow you to select the category. Therefore, you are going to use it.

Steps to add new custom blog page

1. Click Menus & Pages icon
2. Click Site Menu
3. Click + Add Page button 
4. Rename the page with the local language name
5. Click My Blog icon
6. Click Add Blog Elements
7. Select an custom feed
8. Click Settings button
9. Choose the local language category

2.3. Add custom blog pages under Blog menu

If you have multiple custom blog pages, they will overcrowd your header menu. And they don’t look good. To fix it, you must perform the steps below. Instead of displaying the custom blog pages horizontally, you display them vertically when someone clicks the Blog menu.

Steps to create blog language dropdown menu

1. Click Menus & Pages icon
2. Click Site Menu
3. Drag the custom blog pages and drop them under the main Blog page

3. Position the language menu right

After you add another language, Wix automatically adds a language menu to your site. The menu position is often not ideal. You must place it at the right place so that it has the most visibility.

The header and the footer are the two good places. Most of the time the menu is placed at the upper left corner of your site or at the upper right corner of your site.

In some rare cases, the language menu is placed in the footer area. But the sites in those cases are very simple. You can easily see the footer without scrolling up or down.

4. Design the languages menu 

Also, the design of the language menu is important. In Wix, you can choose to display or hide elements like the country flags, the language name (ex: English, Chinese, etc), or the language abbreviation (ex: EN). 

The language name is the most important. But it sucks in Wix. Wix doesn’t allow to display language names in local languages. For example: English , русский. 

Every language name in Wix must be in English. Like Chinese, Japanese. If you don’t know English, you will never figure out which option to choose. 

As an English speaker, you find it hard to understand this pain.

Assume you are seeing a chinese website. You don’t know Chinese. You want to switch to English. But the options on the language menu are 英语 , 俄语. Now you are totally lost.

The first option is English. The second option is Russian. If the web designer does it correctly, he will display the language options like English , русский.

Thus, you must fix it by displaying the country flags in your language menu. 

Conclusion

Currently the new Wix blog doesn’t have a multilingual function. But you can use the Wix blog post categories to achieve an okay result. Check out other posts for more Wix tutorials.