Display your website content in multiple languages

Offering your website content in multiple languages is an important step in reaching a broader audience. To provide a better and more inclusive user experience for your visitors, Xperience by Kentico supports localization and language variants.

Preparing different language versions of your content is a task for the editors. However, development effort is required to properly set up different language support in your website.

Prerequisites

This guide, assumes you have the following:

• a running instance of Xperience by Kentico version 29.6.1 or higher (for guidance, follow Install a specific version of Xperience by Kentico)
• a website channel set up with at least one page displaying a content item stored in the content hub (for guidance, follow our Kickstart series)

Additionally, this guide assumes you have followed Create a cookie preferences widget guide and Build a tracking consent banner guide (or implemented your own cookies widget and tracking consent banner in a similar way.) The widget and tracking consent banner this guide is working with look like this:

Understand languages in Xperience by Kentico

Before diving in, let’s get familiar with the basic concepts of working with languages in Xperience by Kentico.

Languages are defined in the administration interface using the Languages application.

When more than one language is defined, editors can create multiple language variants of website channel pages, content items, and consent texts (one variant per language).

One language must always be set as a default language.

For example, if the default language is English, any content items editors create are, by default, English language variants. Editors can create a different language variant by manually picking a different language.

Each language can be assigned a fallback language. If you set up a fallback language and try to retrieve content in a language it is not translated into, the content will come back in the fallback language instead.

Every website channel has a primary language (typically assigned at the time of channel creation). This is a “default” language for the channel. When a visitor navigates to your website without specifying the language code in the URL (e.g., baseURL/page), they will see the page content in the primary language. Navigating to baseURL/<language_code_name>/page will return the page content in a specific language. We talk more about multilingual URLs in the next guide of this mini-series.

Implement the multilingual support for your site

Although creating the language versions of content is a task for editors, as a developer, you must take steps to ensure a consistent experience for your website visitors.

Retrieve preferred language

The first important building block is the preferred language retriever. Its Get() method returns the language of the request (if defined) or the primary language of the current website channel. You can simply inject IPreferredLanguageRetriever anywhere you need, using dependency injection. For example:

using Kentico.Content.Web.Mvc.Routing;

public class MyClass
{
    private readonly IPreferredLanguageRetriever preferredLanguageRetriever;

    public MyClass(IPreferredLanguageRetriever preferredLanguageRetriever)
    {
        this.preferredLanguageRetriever = preferredLanguageRetriever;
    }

    public string DoThings()
    {
        // Retrieve the preferred language
        var currentLanguage = preferredLanguageRetriever.Get();
        ...
    }
}

Retrieve localized content items

To retrieve a specific language variant of a content item (website channel pages or content items stored in content hub), you simply use the InLanguage extension method of ContentItemQueryBuilder, passing it a language Code name (see picture above) as a parameter.

By passing in the preferred language, you will get your content item(s) in a language variant consistent with your current context.

Take a look at the place in your code where you call the ContentItemQueryBuilder. If you have been working off the main branch of our training guides repository or are following along looking at the finished branch, one example is located in the TrainingGuides.Web/Features/Shared/Services/ContentItemRetrieverService.cs. 

...
public async Task<IEnumerable<T>> RetrieveWebPageContentItems(
        string contentTypeName,
        Func<ContentTypeQueryParameters, ContentTypeQueryParameters> queryFilter)
    {
        var builder = new ContentItemQueryBuilder()
                            .ForContentType(
                                contentTypeName,
                                config => queryFilter(config)
                                .ForWebsite(webSiteChannelContext.WebsiteChannelName)
                            )
                            .InLanguage(preferredLanguageRetriever.Get());

        var queryExecutorOptions = new ContentQueryExecutionOptions
        {
            ForPreview = webSiteChannelContext.IsPreview
        };

        var pages = await contentQueryExecutor.GetMappedWebPageResult<T>(builder, queryExecutorOptions);

        return pages;
    }
...

...
var pages = await RetrieveWebPageContentItems(
                contentTypeName,
                config => config
                    .Where(where => where.WhereEquals(nameof(WebPageFields.WebPageItemID), webPageItemId))
                    .WithLinkedItems(depth));
...

Retrieve localized consent texts

Localizing consent texts looks very similar to localizing content items - you utilize the IPreferredLanguageRetriever. Simply pass the preferred language to the GetConsentTextAsync method as a parameter:

await consent.GetConsentTextAsync(preferredLanguageRetriever.Get()))

A good example of this in practice is a cookie preferences widget or a tracking consent banner. If you have previously followed our Create a cookie preferences widget and Build a tracking consent banner guides, your code likely already handles multilingual situations, but let’s take a closer look.

1. Cookie preferences widget

   Navigate to CookiePreferencesWidgetViewComponent.cs in TrainingGuides.Web/Features/DataProtection/Widgets/CookiePreferences:

   C#

   CookiePreferencesWidgetViewComponent.cs

   Copy

   
   
    ...
    public async Task<ViewViewComponentResult> InvokeAsync(CookiePreferencesWidgetProperties properties)
    {
        ...
        return View("~/Features/DataProtection/Widgets/CookiePreferences/CookiePreferencesWidget.cshtml", new CookiePreferencesWidgetViewModel
        {
            // In this example Essential header and description are defined in the cookies widget (not as a separate consent in Data protection).
            // The correct language version will come back together with the page content.
            EssentialHeader = properties.EssentialHeader,
            EssentialDescription = properties.EssentialDescription,
   
            PreferenceHeader = preferenceCookiesConsent.ConsentDisplayName ?? CONSENT_MISSING_HEADER,
            // Retrieve consent text in preferred language and display its FullText property value as PreferenceDescription
            PreferenceDescription = new HtmlString((await preferenceCookiesConsent.GetConsentTextAsync(preferredLanguageRetriever.Get())).FullText) ?? consentMissingDescription,
   
            AnalyticalHeader = analyticalCookiesConsent.ConsentDisplayName ?? CONSENT_MISSING_HEADER,
            // Retrieve consent text in preferred language and display its FullText property value as AnalyticalDescription
            AnalyticalDescription = new HtmlString((await analyticalCookiesConsent.GetConsentTextAsync(preferredLanguageRetriever.Get())).FullText) ?? consentMissingDescription,
   
            MarketingHeader = marketingCookiesConsent.ConsentDisplayName ?? CONSENT_MISSING_HEADER,
            // Retrieve consent text in preferred language and display its FullText property value as MarketingDescription
            MarketingDescription = new HtmlString((await marketingCookiesConsent.GetConsentTextAsync(preferredLanguageRetriever.Get())).FullText) ?? consentMissingDescription,
   
            ...
        });
    }
    ...
   
    

   If you are showing the ConsentDisplayName to the visitor (e.g., as a consent header), be advised, that ConsentDisplayName does not support multiple language versions at this time. We recommend utilizing stringLocalizer and Shared resources in your .Net project to handle this, as you will see in the next section of this guide.

   See this guide to view the code in context.

2. Tracking consent banner

   Navigate to TrackingConsentViewComponent.cs in TrainingGuides.Web/Features/DataProtection/ViewComponents/TrackingConsent:

   C#

   TrackingConsentViewComponent.cs

   Copy

   
   
    ...
    public async Task<IViewComponentResult> InvokeAsync()
    {
        ...
   
        if (consents.Count() > 0)
        {
            var currentContactInfo = ContactManagementContext.GetCurrentContact(false);
   
            string text = "<ul>";
            List<string> codenames = [];
            bool isAgreed = false;
            foreach (var consent in consents)
            {
                ...
   
                // When iterating through the list of consents to render a list of short texts:
                // Retrieve consent text in preferred language and access its ShortText property
                text += $"<li>{(await consent.GetConsentTextAsync(preferredLanguageRetriever.Get())).ShortText}</li>";
   
                ...
            }
            text += "</ul>";
   
            ...
            // Displays a view with tracking consent information and actions
            return View("~/Features/DataProtection/ViewComponents/TrackingConsent/TrackingConsent.cshtml", consentModel);
        }
   
        return Content(string.Empty);
    }
    ...
   
    

   Feel free to look over this code in the context of its guide.

Translate other application texts

Your application can now display localized consent texts. However, there are still some visitor-facing strings in your application that are not part of content items or consents. For example, the title in the header, the texts in the footer, cookie headers, or the Configure cookies link in the Tracking consent banner.

We recommend utilizing ASP .NET Core IStringLocalizer and Shared resources for translating strings like these. If you are following along and working off the Training guides repository, you can see the TrainingGuides.Web project already contains a Resources folder with a SharedResources class. Let’s translate your texts into Spanish. Start with the “Training guides” title in the Header view component. 

1. Locate HeaderViewComponent.cs file under TrainingGuides.Web/Features/Header.

2. Inject IStringLocalizer using constructor injection and translate the Heading property as you see in the code below:

   C#

   HeaderViewComponent.cs

   Copy

   
   
    using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;
    using Microsoft.Extensions.Localization;
   
    namespace TrainingGuides.Web.Features.Header;
    public class HeaderViewComponent : ViewComponent
    {
   
        // Inject the IStringLocalizer passing in the SharedResources type.
        private readonly IStringLocalizer<SharedResources> stringLocalizer;
        public HeaderViewComponent(IStringLocalizer<SharedResources> stringLocalizer)
        {
            this.stringLocalizer = stringLocalizer;
        }
   
        public IViewComponentResult Invoke()
        {
            var model = new HeaderViewModel()
            {
                // Localize the "Training guides" string.
                Heading = stringLocalizer["Training guides"]
            };
            return View("~/Features/Header/Header.cshtml", model);
        }
    }
   
    

3. In the Resources folder, create a SharedResources.es.resx file.

   It is a good practice to use the two-letter ISO language name, based on IETF or one of the ISO-639 standards - “es” for Spanish.

   The example implementation in this guide requires the language name to match the Code name defined for your language in Xperience administration.

   IStringLocalizer doesn’t require storing the default language strings in a resource file. Simply call the localizer on the default strings (like in the code sample above).

   While the older approach of creating SharedResources.resx file and defining a code name for each string is still valid and works, Microsoft documentation of the IStringLocalizer refers to the newer practice as preferred.

4. Add the Spanish translation:

   • name: Training guides (the text in primary language)

   • value: Guías de formación

     Visual Studio will allow you to modify the file in a table view. If you use a different editor (e.g., Visual Studio Code), you may have to manually edit the XML inside the file. To add a text translation, add a <data> tag inside the root:

     XML

     Copy

     
     
       <data name="Training guides" xml:space="preserve">
           <value>Guías de formación</value>
       </data>
     
       

5. Find other strings in the project that are “hardcoded” in the application, rather than stored in Xperience by Kentico, and repeat the same steps.

   To localize strings inside views, simply @inject IStringLocalizer<SharedResources> StringLocalizer in the view or in your _ViewImports.cshtml file. Then, you can call StringLocalizer just like in the example above. For instance, @StringLocalizer["Xperience by Kentico training guide samples."] to translate one of the footer texts.

   Here is a link to the full SharedResources.es.resx file in our repository, for your reference. It contains texts from TrainingGuides.Web project translated into Spanish.

Your website visitors can now view individual pages’ content in English (the default language) and Spanish (by typing ‘/es’ after the base URL in the browser navigation bar):

What’s next

The next guide of this mini-series, explains how to handle navigation between multilingual pages. You will also implement a simple language selector, enabling visitors to switch between languages in a more user-friendly way.