If you are building a site, which should support more than one language, there are two ways of doing this. Okay, perhaps there are more than two, but I will only give two examples.
The two I will cover is:
1. Manually adding language page
2. Integrated TYPO3 language support
1. Manually adding language page
This I will only touch briefly, as the solution should be obvious when the layout is presented. It should be very easy. Just create a tree like this and manually do the linking:

That’s it.
2. Integrated TYPO3 language support
This is quite different compared to the first setup. We will be using the built-in language support in TYPO3, based on a tree structure like this:

First step is to create the languages and this is done by selecting list, clicking your site in the tree structure and then adding a website language:


Then create the number of languages needed for the site.

Second step is the template configuration. Before doing this, we have to check which id numbers the languages has been given. This is done by selecting list on your site (just as when we created the languages) and the hover your mouse above each language:

When this is done, then go to the template setup field and enter the following:
config.sys_language_overlay = hideNonTranslated config.linkVars = L [globalVar = GP:L=en] config.sys_language_uid=2 config.language = en [global] [globalVar = GP:L=dk] config.sys_language_uid=1 config.language = dk [global]
What this does is:
config.sys_language_overlay = hideNonTranslated will hide a page or content element, if is does not have content for the specific site. Remove or outcomment this, if you want all elements displayed.
config.linkVars = L is the parameter used in the url for selecting language. Ie http://domain.tld/index.php?id=2?L=dk
[globalVar = GP:L=dk] a section like this, configures the language based on the parameter passed by the linkVars. Here it will trigger on L=dk
config.sys_language_uid=1 this will join the dk-parameter with the language id 1, which we found earlier.
config.language = dk this will set the page language for dk
Third and final step is to configure a page to use the new languages. This is done by selecting list, clicking the page and adding an Alternative Page Language


Then select which language you want to create a page for, type in the page title and save it.

We are now ready for translating the page. When editing an element on the newly configured page, there is now a new option in the top of the page. Select the new language and type in the translation.

That’s it. TYPO3 will now display the Danish content when visiting the page with the L=dk parameter in the url.

juli 31st, 2009 at 04:07
Thank you for the this straight forward how-to on enabling multiple languages with TYPO3. Please keep these helpful articles coming.
april 5th, 2010 at 15:00
Hello Michal
Good tutorial
But i have problem when try to change language in fronted
only change menu but content not changed
how i can solve it ?
april 5th, 2010 at 16:02
Have you entered a translated text for the content on the webpage, as shown in the very last screenshot?
oktober 11th, 2010 at 06:43
Hi,
Thanks, this helps me a lot. I am new in developing typo3. Keep writing…:)
Thanks again.
januar 28th, 2011 at 06:53
HI
Thanks for the wonderfull article but i’m having some problem in showing languages in default tab i.e step 5
The default tab is not populated with languages i created
Can somebody help me plz???
regards
rey
september 23rd, 2011 at 15:43
Thanks a lot, that helped me…
But how can I change the default language, or completely remove english?
december 30th, 2011 at 01:44
Same problem here, the url is changing but not the translated content!! Thinks it has something todo with a typo 4.3.9 installation. Found a page where they say you will need a FCE element…
http://wiki.typo3.org/TemplaVoila#TemplaVoila_localization
Would be nice to have a tutorial the way this one is build: Simple and clear!
thanks in advance
juli 11th, 2012 at 17:01
Thanks for such a nice and in detailed article on multilingual concept, today I was stuck as i missed something/step but your article helped me a to break the crisis.
thanks again!
Monis
august 6th, 2012 at 02:17
Hi, i got a question about multilanguage and TV, is there any possibility to get alternative template for different languages? Thats something i need to finish my page.
By the way, thanks for great tut! its really helpfull!