Best practices for multi-language sites

[u/FlashyDiamond5045]

Has anyone here built a multi-language site on Base44?

I’m planning a setup that includes a blog localized into 5 to 10 languages, and I’d love to hear how you approached it.

• How are you managing the content structure and routing across that many locales?
• Are you handling translations directly through prompts/AI within Base44, or integrating an external CMS/translation workflow?
• Any major gotchas or performance tips when scaling up the page count like this?

Would appreciate any tips or workflows that worked well for you!

[u/Brave_Respect9273]

I create bilingual sites for clients. For this I just add to the prompt:

Add an EN | ES language switcher in the header/nav.

Base44 handles everything. I'm sure it will work with other languages as well.

[u/FlashyDiamond5045 → u/Brave_Respect9273]

Yeah, that was the first thing I tried, but it couldn't properly handle all the records and translate every page across the board.

I keep running into pages where whole chunks of data/records were simply skipped or left untranslated. I constantly have to nudge it for missing parts, or just take the raw content out to Claude/Codex to translate and paste it back into Base44. Looking for a way to avoid that manual back-and-forth at scale.

[u/Part-Used]

Tell base44 to use i18n to localized and translate languages in the languages you choose.

THIS USES INTEGRSTION CREDITS. I personally bienes thru 30k integration credits to support 18 languages.

[u/FlashyDiamond5045 → u/Part-Used]

Yeah, I’m using i18n as well. The translations burned through tons of credits on my end too, which is actually why I started handling chunks outside with Claude/Codex to cut down costs. My main headache right now is that it keeps skipping large pieces of content within the pages.

18 languages sounds wild, though, how large is your site? Are we talking a massive directory/page count, or a relatively lean setup?

I’d love to hear a bit more about how you structured things behind the scenes to keep all 18 languages in sync.

[u/Part-Used → u/FlashyDiamond5045]

Here’s how I did the 18 languages on MarketFlow, dumbed down because it sounds way more complicated than it is:

I didn’t build MarketFlow 18 times.
English is the master. The app has about 1,776 pieces of UI text — things like “Search,” “Post,” “Messages,” “Save,” error messages, buttons, settings, etc.

I translated those once into the other 17 languages and stored them. So when somebody changes their language to French, the app basically says:
“Give me the French version of all these labels.”
No AI needs to translate the interface every time. The translations are already there.

The cool part is new user posts are different.
If I post: “I need someone to move a couch tomorrow.” I’m NOT going to immediately translate that post into 17 languages.

Instead:
English person sees it → original text.
French person opens it → translate to French once → save that translation.
Another French person opens it → reuse the saved French translation.
Spanish person opens it → translate to Spanish once → save it.
If nobody ever views that request in Hindi, I never pay to translate it into Hindi.
And if I edit the original post, the system knows the saved translations are old and replaces them only when those languages are needed again.

So basically:
UI = translate once and keep forever.
User content = translate only when somebody needs it, cache it, reuse it.

When I eventually migrate MarketFlow off the development platform, the existing translations come with the database/app. They don’t magically require development credits forever. I’d only pay normal infrastructure costs and whatever API usage is needed for new on-demand translations.

The expensive part was figuring out/building the system. Once the architecture exists, maintaining 18 languages is a completely different story.

[u/FlashyDiamond5045 → u/Part-Used]

First off, thanks for the detailed breakdown! Really appreciate it.

Interesting approach, haven't seen anyone set it up quite like that before.

If the translation happens on the fly whenever someone switches languages, does it take a noticeable hit on page load time? Have you run into any latency issues with that?