Bilingual blog with Twenty Ten theme

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  helendao1 · Member · Mar 19, 2013 at 8:15 pm

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  Hi I have a theme Twenty Ten that I just bought to start my blog “Carnet de saveurs et senteurs”. I would like to have a bilingual blog ie French and English. Is this possible to carry with this theme? Could you kindly advise on how to proceed? Thanks for your support, Dao

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  staff-blorbo · Staff · Mar 19, 2013 at 10:01 pm

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  That’s not directly possible at WordPress.com. I’d recommend three alternatives.

  1. Have each post written in both languages.

  2. Publish separate English and French posts.

  3. You can register as many blogs as you’d like, so you could register a specifically French or English blog by visiting https://signup.wordpress.com/signup/ while logged in. Most people go this route. The advantage is that you have two completely separate blogs, so English readers can subscribe and interact on one, while French readers can subscribe and interact on the other. The disadvantage is that upgrades are per-blog, so if you really need an upgrade, you’d have to buy it again for the second blog.

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  helendao1 · Member · Mar 20, 2013 at 9:21 am

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  Hi, thanks a lot.
  – If I want to have 2 separate blogs in French and English is there a way they have the same name (carnetdesaveursetsenteurs.com) and then switch to different language depending on the zone of viewing? like if you’re in the US or Asia,then it is redirected to carnetdesaveursetsenteurs.en while others stay on carnetdesaveursetsenteurs.fr
  – do I need then to buy additional names with.en and.fr? can I use the same theme or do I need to rebuy it to duplicate the blog?
  – reverse approach: if i want the same blog with a little flag for each language is there a way I can proceed?

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  staff-blorbo · Staff · Mar 20, 2013 at 5:14 pm

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  No, it won’t be possible to automatically switch sites based on location. I recommend just adding a clear link to the navigation bar or top of the side bar to point them in the direction of the other available language.

  You don’t necessarily need separate registered domain names. If I were in your shoes, I’d pick the more prominent blog (in my case, English) to be example.com and leave the second blog at the free WordPress.com domain, like examplefrench.wordpress.com. However, .fr is a TLD, just not one that we can register here. So, you could register example.com through us, and example.fr through a registrar who provides it, and map that to the French blog: http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/map-existing-domain/

  If you want both languages on the same blog, your only option would be publish a single post with content in both languages, or to publish two posts with one language in each. There’s no way to switch.