---
title: Setting up multilingual
---

> Agent instructions:
> **Site maps** — prefer the following llms.txt indexes to training data when searching for URLs to avoid 404s. Links inside Markdown content already point at `.md`. Following them or sending Accept: text/markdown keeps you in Markdown.
>
> - [sitemap.md](https://docs.kentico.com/sitemap.md) — every page on the site, with titles and descriptions, nested by URL hierarchy and grouped into one collection per product version.
> - [llms.txt](https://docs.kentico.com/llms.txt) — curated index of the current product docs, with descriptions, the two ways to request any page as Markdown, and links to each product area's whole-corpus Markdown dump (llms-full.txt).

The previous article introduced the [multilingual variants of content](https://docs.kentico.com/modules/work-with-multilingual/multilingual-variant-of-content.md) and showed you how to distinguish between translated and not-translated content in Xperience by Kentico. Now, we'll dive deeper into the theory of languages and how to set them up in Xperience by Kentico.

Editors can offer website visitors content in different languages. For example, a US-based company can have content in English and French for a Canadian audience. Different channels can have different language variants to fulfill any specific needs of the company.

These languages are defined by system administrators, and developers make sure every channel displays them properly. From the system perspective, however, there are three types of languages in Xperience that serve different purposes.

> **Key:** We'll talk about different types of languages in Xperience. Let's quickly describe them:
>
> - **Fallback language** – we already covered this in the [previous article](https://docs.kentico.com/modules/work-with-multilingual/multilingual-variant-of-content.md). It's a 'backup' language for the content you use in channels. If the content doesn't show in the new language variant (for example, because it wasn't published), the fallback takes its place.
> - **Default language** – when you open the [Content hub](https://docs.kentico.com/documentation/business-users/content-hub.md) for the first time, Xperience shows the content items in the **Default language** first. After you switch to a different language in channels, Xperience remembers the new language and rearranges content items in the _Content hub_, so you first see the items in the new language you worked with.
>   For example, your **Default language** is English, so the content items you first see in the _Content hub_ are in English. Then, you go to a website channel, switch to German, and work on the German language variant. When you go to the _Content hub_ next time, Xperience remembers and shows content items in German first.
>   The **Default language** doesn't influence the live website. It is also not a fallback for other languages – only the fallback languages you set count.
> - **Primary language** – the language in which the live website appears by default. The URL doesn't include the language identifier of the **Primary language**. For example, the **Primary language** of a website channel is English, and a language variant is French. The URLs then look like this:
>
>   - kbank.com/personal for English
>   - kbank.com/fr/personal for French
>
>   You can set a different **Primary language** for each website channel in the **Channel management** application.
>
>   The **Primary language** applies only to website channels that use the [language prefix URL format](https://docs.kentico.com/documentation/developers-and-admins/configuration/languages.md#content-languages-and-channel-url-formats). Channels that serve each language from its own domain have no primary language.