Multiple Language Websites
There are plenty of reasons you might want to create a website in more than one language: a Canadian site in both French and English, a community website in Spanish and English, or even a multilingual website for your company.
Note: You can also make your website instantly multilingual with Google Translate.
Choosing a Layout
Jimdo makes it easy to go multi-lingual. Start with a new JimdoPage and choose a layout that works – preferably one that separates the main navigation from second-level navigation. Two great Pro layouts for bilingual websites are P1304 and P544, but there are plenty of others that work well, too.
Prepare Your Content
It may or may not be obvious to you, but if you want to create a website in two languages, you have to create content in two languages. Just because you create a multilingual website doesn’t mean it will translate your content for you. So first create your content in both (or all) languages!
Before you add any content to the new site, it's important to first prepare an outline or skeleton of your site for each of the languages. This will help keep things organized as you switch between languages. One suggestion before you get going: take your time and get your site structure straight. The more clearly you organize content now, the easier it will be to edit in other languages. It will also be easier for visitors to your website to find their way around.
Example Site
Build the Navigation
Start by editing the top navigation menu and adding pages for each of the languages you want to appear in your website using the main navigation. In this example, we're creating a site in English and Spanish, so we create one page for English and one for Spanish.
Main Pages
Each language page we add in this way shows up as a button in the upper left of our JimdoPage. When we click on Español, we’re actually switching from the English version of our website to the Spanish version. Once we’ve gotten this far, we can start adding pages in each language.
Subpages
In our example, we chose three navigation pages. In English: “About Us”, “Store”, and “Contact.” In Spanish: "Nosotros", "Tienda" and "Contacto." To add a new navigation page, just click on the “+” symbol. Then we give the page a name and click on the side arrow to create a second-level navigation button.
You can also create third-level navigation buttons – if you want to add several pages of pictures to your “About Us” page, for example, or for individual product pages in your Store. Right now, though, our website looks fairly basic.
Add the Content
Now we’re ready to add content in all of our chosen languges!
If you'd like to see a more finished example, check out the two basic sample multilingual sites we created. Make sure to click around to see exactly how it works:
http://bilingualsite.jimdo.com/
http://zweisprachen.jimdo.com/
And here’s one particularly well-designed multilingual JimdoPage (watch out - you need solid HTML and CSS skills to make a website look like this!):
Print Version