How Many Languages Should You Start With?

Start with the languages your existing visitors, customers and support requests already point to, and add them one at a time. A small number of well-checked languages beats a long list of thin ones. Each language is a second copy of your site that has to be correct, findable and kept in step with the original.

Why not start with everything?

Machine translation makes it technically easy to add twenty languages in an afternoon. The cost shows up later:

• Review. Every language needs someone, or at least a spot-check routine, to read the pages that matter. See machine vs human vs hybrid translation.
• Indexing. Google's multi-regional guidance warns against translating only the boilerplate of a page while leaving the main content in one language, because it can create a bad user experience. A page that is only partly translated is a weak page in any language.
• Maintenance. Every time you change a sentence on the original page, each language needs the update.
• Support. A visitor who reads a page in Polish will write to you in Polish.

Step 1: collect the evidence you already have

You do not need a market study. Spend an hour with these sources:

1. Analytics. Which countries and browser languages send visitors? Look for visitors who leave quickly because the page is in a language they do not read.
2. Sales and enquiries. Where do orders, quote requests and support tickets come from? Orders from a country you never marketed to are a strong signal.
3. Search queries. Your search tool's reports show queries and countries. Queries in another language that already reach you are demand you can serve better.
4. Competitors. Look at which languages sites like yours offer. This is a hint, not proof: they may have chosen badly.
5. Your own capacity. Can you answer an email, take a call or ship an order in that language? If not, a translated shop front makes a promise you cannot keep.

Step 2: choose languages, not countries

A language is a bigger and simpler decision than a country. Spanish is spoken in many countries, and Portuguese in Portugal and Brazil differs enough that many businesses treat them as separate audiences. Standard language tags can carry a region (pt-BR, fr-CA) but the W3C advises keeping a tag as short as possible and adding a region only when it makes a useful difference. Start with the bare language and split later if prices, shipping, legal text or vocabulary really differ. Our guide to language and region codes shows how.

Step 3: start small, then add one at a time

A sensible rhythm for most small and medium sites:

We are not quoting a "right" number. The number that is right is the one you can keep accurate, and that is different for a five-page brochure site and a ten-thousand-product shop.

Step 4: decide what a language includes

Before you add a language, decide how far it goes:

• Which pages. Home, product or service pages, pricing, contact and help come first. Old blog posts can wait.
• Which parts. Titles, descriptions, image text, forms and error messages all need attention, not just body text. See translating checkout and forms.
• How it is reviewed. Decide in advance which pages need a person to read them.
• Whether it is indexed. Google documents the noindex robots meta tag for keeping a page out of search results. If a language is still an unreviewed machine draft, keeping it out of the index while you check it is a judgement call that costs little. It is our advice, not a Google rule.

What it means in LgTranslate

LgTranslate lets you choose the target languages per site and add them later; adding a language translates only the text that does not have a translation yet. The dashboard offers 40 languages. The source language is free and does not count as a target. Because adding a language later is cheap, there is no reason to guess a large list on day one. The design also holds back pages with too little translated text from search engines (a coverage threshold) so a half-finished language does not turn into a pile of weak pages; this was tested in isolation and not yet on a real WordPress site, so treat it as a safety net rather than a guarantee. Current prices and what each plan includes are on the pricing page.

A simple decision rule

If you can name a country or group of customers and a reason, pick that language. If you can only say "it might help", wait. You can always add a language next week; a language you added too early and left unchecked is harder to take back.

Next step

Pick your one or two best-evidenced languages, translate your ten most important pages, and read them yourself or have a native speaker do it. When you are ready to try it on your own site, create an account and add your first site with a single target language.

Key takeaways

• Choose languages from evidence you already have: visitors, orders, enquiries, search queries.
• Think language first, country second; add regional variants only when they differ in a way that matters.
• Add languages one at a time and review before adding the next.
• A partly translated language is worse than none: finish key pages or keep the language out of the index.

Sources

• Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites – Google Search Central – warning about translating only boilerplate (checked 2026-11-06)
• Localized versions of your pages – Google Search Central – language alone or language plus region in hreflang values (checked 2026-11-06)
• Block Search indexing with noindex – Google Search Central – the noindex robots meta tag (checked 2026-11-06)
• Choosing a language tag – W3C Internationalization – keep language tags short, region only when useful (checked 2026-11-06)