Link HREFLANG

By David Walsh on February 11, 2014

If you work on a website that is offered in more than one language, you deserve a medal. The need to localize almost everything is tough and sometimes feels very limiting. No adding text to imagery, never knowing how different translation will affect layout, maintaining different templates, etc. A very necessary task but damn, it can be tough.

Here's one easy part of localizing that's easy: adding link elements which reference alternate URLs per language. Here's how you'd use it:

<!-- Used on CNN -->
<link href="http://edition.cnn.com" hreflang="en-gb" rel="alternate" title="CNN International" type="text/html"/>
<link href="http://arabic.cnn.com" hreflang="ar" rel="alternate" title="CNN Arabic" type="text/html"/>
<link href="http://mexico.cnn.com" hreflang="es" rel="alternate" title="CNN Mexico" type="text/html"/>

<!-- Used on MDN -->
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ar" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/ar/docs/Web/CSS" title="ورقة الأنماط الإنسيابية">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="bn-BD" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/bn-BD/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ca" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/ca/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="cs" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/cs/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/de/docs/Web/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/es/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fa" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/fa/docs/Web/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/fr/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="id" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/id/docs/Web/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="it" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/it/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ja" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/ja/docs/Web/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ko" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/ko/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="nl" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/nl/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="pl" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/pl/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="pt-BR" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/pt-BR/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="pt-PT" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/pt-PT/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ru" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/ru/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="vi" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/vi/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="zh-CN" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/zh-CN/docs/CSS" title="CSS">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="zh-TW" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/zh-TW/docs/CSS" title="CSS">

The code is very self-explanatory so I won't break it down, but it's something you should be adding when a page is available in more than one language.

Recent Features

By David WalshNovember 7, 2012

Camera and Video Control with HTML5

Client-side APIs on mobile and desktop devices are quickly providing the same APIs. Of course our mobile devices got access to some of these APIs first, but those APIs are slowly making their way to the desktop. One of those APIs is the getUserMedia API...

By David WalshNovember 21, 2011

Page Visibility API

One event that's always been lacking within the document is a signal for when the user is looking at a given tab, or another tab. When does the user switch off our site to look at something else? When do they come back?

Incredible Demos

By David WalshAugust 22, 2012

HTML5 download Attribute

I tend to get caught up on the JavaScript side of the HTML5 revolution, and can you blame me? HTML5 gives us awesome "big" stuff like WebSockets, Web Workers, History, Storage and little helpers like the Element classList collection. There are, however, smaller features in...

By David WalshNovember 17, 2012

Xbox Live Gamer API

My sharpshooter status aside, I've always been surprised upset that Microsoft has never provided an API for the vast amount of information about users, the games they play, and statistics within the games. Namely, I'd like to publicly shame every n00b I've baptized with my...