Internationalisation

Multi-language content

In its basic configuration, Wagtail does not provide specific support for multi-language content. This is because there is no single preferred approach to handling translations that works for all scenarios - various approaches are possible, depending on factors such as:

  • The number of languages you intend to support
  • Whether the available site content can differ from one language to another, or is the same for all languages
  • Whether the type of content you’re working with is most naturally modelled as one language per item (e.g. a blog post), or multiple languages per item (e.g. descriptions of a product in a web store)

Several add-on packages for Wagtail providing multi-language support are available:

For a comparison of these options, see AccordBox’s blog post How to support multi-language in Wagtail CMS.

Wagtail admin translations

The Wagtail admin backend has been translated into many different languages. You can find a list of currently available translations on Wagtail’s Transifex page. (Note: if you’re using an old version of Wagtail, this page may not accurately reflect what languages you have available).

If your language isn’t listed on that page, you can easily contribute new languages or correct mistakes. Sign up and submit changes to Transifex. Translation updates are typically merged into an official release within one month of being submitted.

Change Wagtail admin language on a per user basis

Logged-in users can set their preferred language from /admin/account/. By default, Wagtail provides a list of languages that have a >= 90% translation coverage. It is possible to override this list via the WAGTAILADMIN_PERMITTED_LANGUAGES setting.

In case there is zero or one language permitted, the form will be hidden.

If there is no language selected by the user, the LANGUAGE_CODE wil be used.

Changing the primary language of your Wagtail installation

The default language of Wagtail is en-us (American English). You can change this by tweaking a couple of Django settings:

If there is a translation available for your language, the Wagtail admin backend should now be in the language you’ve chosen.