A multilingual industrial website needs governance rather than a set of translated pages.
We build multilingual industrial websites where product data, technical documentation, market differences and local sales priorities stay coherent across languages. The platform is designed for the people who have to maintain it after launch, in markets where each version has a different owner.
Most estates we are asked to rescue reached the same point by the same route. A second language was added as a project, a third as a favour to a local distributor, and a fourth as a separate site because the first three were too rigid. Specifications now differ between versions, several markets rank against each other for the same term, and no one is certain which page is authoritative. The fix is structural, and it starts by separating shared facts from translated copy.
Multilingual industrial websites begin with a governance model: what is shared globally, what may vary by market, who owns each language, and how a change to a product, document or application is carried through the estate. We settle those decisions before configuring any languages.
Governance also means deciding what a local team is allowed to do. Adding a case study or a local event is a reasonable market-level freedom. Editing a specification is not, because that number has to match the data sheet, the quotation and the ERP. Drawing that line explicitly is what keeps a rollout maintainable as markets are added.
Technical translation needs more than a language layer. We structure terminology, product attributes, documents and country-specific content so a local version can be accurate and useful without breaking the shared product model or generating duplicate pages across markets.
Units, decimal separators, standards references and part-number formats all need a defined treatment, as does the question of which documents exist in which language. A data sheet available only in English is a normal situation; presenting it clearly in a German catalogue, rather than leaving an empty download slot, is a design and content-model decision.
We build the structure that translated content lives in and work alongside your translators, distributors or internal reviewers, so the technical layer is ready the moment the language is.
That includes the practical mechanics of getting text in and out: what is exported for translation, how a translator sees the context a string belongs to, how a glossary of your own product terms is applied, and how an update to the source page is flagged to every market that has already translated it.
Code Industrial is the industrial B2B practice of Code Barcelona, an agency building corporate websites and digital platforms since 2015. The same strategy, design and engineering team works on every industrial project, from the first scoping session through to life after launch.
For a distributor it may be availability and catalogue structure. For a manufacturer it is specifications and documentation. Multilingual industrial websites start from what needs consistent ownership across markets.
Questions that come up when an industrial website has to operate across several languages and markets.
The right number follows commercial reality: active markets, local support capacity, product availability and the ability to maintain technical content properly. Launching fewer, well-governed languages is usually stronger than publishing a large set that becomes inaccurate within a year. A language with no owner ages quickly, and an outdated specification does more damage than a missing translation.
Yes. We model genuine country differences such as product availability, certification status, document sets, distributor contacts and commercial content. The variation is then managed as an explicit rule attached to the product, rather than through separate sites copied without control. That is also what allows a market to be added later as configuration work.
Almost always because language and region targeting was never declared properly, or because each market published near-identical content without a canonical strategy. It is a technical problem with a technical fix, and adding more local content usually makes it worse rather than better. The first step is auditing what each version currently declares about itself.
If the model was built for it, yes: adding a market becomes content and configuration work. That is the point of defining availability and language handling at the start rather than treating the second language as a later phase. Retrofitting a market model onto a site built for one language is normally a rebuild of the product layer.
Subdirectories on one domain are the usual choice for industrial groups, because the markets share product data and the domain accumulates its authority in one place. Country domains can be justified where a market operates under a different brand, a separate legal entity or clearly separate commercial terms. It is worth deciding once, since changing later means a migration.
It has a role in the workflow rather than at the end of it. Machine output can give a market a usable draft quickly, but terminology, product names, standards references and safety-related wording need review by someone who knows the domain and the language. We tend to recommend human review on product, document and commercial pages, with a lighter touch on lower-risk content.
Language and market are modelled separately. German may serve Germany, Austria and part of Switzerland with different availability, pricing routes and distributors behind the same text. Treating them as one is what breaks availability logic later, so we map which markets each language serves and how a visitor reaches the correct combination before the build begins.
Each version needs a named owner, usually in the local commercial organisation, with a defined scope of what they may change. Central marketing keeps ownership of the product model, brand and shared documents. Where no local owner exists, it is generally better to publish that market in a shared language than to create a version that will not be maintained.
Multilingual work usually arrives with a migration or a catalogue rebuild attached. These are the capabilities it most often sits with.
A new market, a catalogue that has diverged between languages, or country sites competing with each other: tell us the context and we will outline how a multilingual industrial website should be structured.