To add a new version of a page in a new language, open the page from the Content Search tab and select the language from the language dropdown in the top right-hand corner of the page properties.
Copying Content from an Existing Language
The first time you create a version of a page in a new language, you'll be prompted to choose if you want to populate the page from the existing page in another language. To preserve the placement of links, images, files and other references in the document, choose Yes.
Previewing Content by Language
The page and all of the content on it can be previewed by language while viewing or editing a page (in Edit, Preview or Live mode) from the Site Browser.
Multilingual Content Within the Page
When a user displays a page on a multilingual site, they may select the language to display the page in. The selected language is used to select both which version of the page to display and which version of the content to display. If versions of both the page and content exist in the chosen language, both will be displayed in the chosen language. However if either the page or content does not exist in the chosen language, the page may not display as expected.
If a page exists in the user's chosen language, but pulls content which does not exist in the chosen language, the page will display, but the content may not display. Setting up translation workflows can help ensure that content is created in all language versions before publishing the content to a page. For more information on what the display of different language versions of content within the page, see the Content (Multilingual) documentation.
If a page does not exist in the chosen language, the default language version of the page displays by default. There is a configuration property which allows the default language version of the page to “fall through” when selecting other languages to avoid 404 errors.
DEFAULT_PAGE_TO_DEFAULT_LANGUAGE=true
This property can be set to false, however, if a selected language version of each page does not exist, then the page will be unreachable in that language.
For more information see the Pulling Pages in the Default Language section, below.
Changing Templates/Layouts on Multilingual Pages
When editing existing page content that already exists in multiple languages, changing the template/layout in ANY one of the language versions of the page content, will change the template/layout for EVERY language version of the page content. After changing or updating a Template or a layout, it is highly recommended that all other language versions of the page are reviewed to avoid unexpected page displays or pages with missing content.
For more information on building dynamic pages to pull default language versions of content see the Building Multilingual Sites documentation.
For more information on configuring dotCMS system properties to pull default language versions of pages see the Language Properties documentation.
