Dead Simple i18n. Typesafe, Small Footprint, SEO-Friendly and with an IDE Integration.

#Gettting Started

npx @inlang/paraglide-js init
npm i @inlang/paraglide-astro

This will generate messages/{lang}.json files for each of your languages. That's where your translations live.

import paraglide from "@inlang/paraglide-astro"

export default {
	// Use astro's i18n routing for deciding which language to use
	i18n: {
		locales: ["en", { code: "de", path: "deutsch" }],
		defaultLocale: "en",
	},

	integrations: [
		paraglide({
			// recommended settings
			project: "./project.inlang",
			outdir: "./src/paraglide", //where your files should be
		}),
	],
}

#Passing the Language to the Client

To save bundle size the integration doesn't ship language detection code to the client. Instead, it will read the lang attribute on the <html> tag. Make sure it is set correctly.

//src/layouts/default.astro
---
import { languageTag } from "../paraglide/runtime";
---

<!doctype html>
<html lang={languageTag()} dir={Astro.locals.paraglide.dir}>
    <slot />
</html>

#Usage

#Adding & using messages

Messages live in messages/{lang}.json files. Add a message to get started

// messages.en.json
{
	"hello": "Hello {name}!"
}

You can edit which languages you support in project.inlang/settings.json.

{
	"languageTags": ["en", "de"],
	"sourceLanguageTag": "en"
}

Use messages in code by importing from the paraglide/messages.js file generated by the compiler.

---
import * as m from "../paraglide/messages.js";
---

<h1>{m.hello({ name: "Samuel" })}</h1>

Vite can tree-shake the messages with no extra work from you. Only messages that are used on an Island will be included in the client bundle.

#Understanding Language Detection

Paraglide-Astro relies on astro:i18n's language detection. Place your page in a folder named for the language (or the path of the language) & all messages will be in that language.

src
├── pages
│   ├── en
│   │   ├── index.astro
│   │   └── about.astro
│   └── de
│       ├── index.astro
│       └── about.astro

If a page isn't in a language folder, it will use the default language.

src
├── pages
│   ├── index.astro // default language
│   ├── about.astro // default language
│   └── de
│       ├── index.astro // de
│       └── about.astro // de

You can configure which languages are available, and which is the default language in project.inlang/settings.json.

To save bundle size the integration doesn't ship language detection code to the client. Instead, it will read the lang attribute on the <html> tag. Make sure it is set correctly.

//src/layouts/default.astro
---
import { languageTag } from "$paraglide/runtime";
---

<!doctype html>
<html lang={languageTag()} dir={Astro.locals.paraglide.dir}>
    <slot />
</html>
---

You can also access the current language and text-direction via Astro.locals.paraglide.lang and Astro.locals.paraglide.dir respectively.

#Linking between pages

Because pages in different languages often have different slugs there is no way to automatically generate links in all languages. You will need to define a custom function.

import type { AvailableLanguageTag } from "./paraglide/runtime.js"

type AbsolutePathname = `/${string}`

const pathnames : Record<AbsolutePathname, 
	Record<AvailableLanguageTag, AbsolutePathname>
> = {
	"/about": {
		en: "/about",
		de: "/de/ueber-uns",
	}
}

// src/linking.ts
export function localizePathname(
	pathname: AbsolutePathname, 
	locale: AvailableLanguageTag
) {
	if(pathnames[pathname]) {
		return pathnames[pathname][locale]
	}
	return pathname
}

Then use this function on your links

<a href={localizePathname("/about", languageTag())}>{m.about()}</a>

For SEO reasons, you should add alternate links to your page's head that point to all translations of the current page. Include the current page. Make sure these are full HREFs, including the protocol and origin, not just the path.

<head>
	<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://acme.com/en/about" />
	<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="https://acme.com/de/ueber-uns" />
</head>

Since only you know which pages correspond to each other this can't reliably be done automatically. Add these links manually.

#Roadmap

Improved Server-Rendering support
Automatic Link-Map generation

#Playground

Check out an example Astro project with Paraglide integration on StackBlitz