---
title: Enable Multi-Language Content


---
This guide explains you how to enable the Livingdocs core setup for multi-language support.
The core setup also includes a translation workflow that can be enabled via configuration in the "Project Setup" section (UI).

The following shows the search dashboard that gets a new language column and filter if the multi-language feature is configured.
![Dashboard UI](/guides/editor/multi-language-content/dashboard.png)


The metadata screen gets a new language select box if the multi-language feature is configured.
![Dashboard UI](/guides/editor/multi-language-content/metadata.png)


#### Related Infos

- Read the [metadata translations for Data Records](/guides/editor/metadata-translations/llms.txt) guide to learn how to use translations for Data Records.
- Read the [setting up the Media Library](/guides/media-library/media-library-setup/llms.txt) guide to learn how to configure translations for your Images, Videos and Files.
- Get a list of available [metadata plugins](/reference/document/metadata/plugins/llms.txt)

## Server-side

### Languages

On the server, we first need to provide which languages we want to support in our project. This is defined per [project](/reference/project-config/llms.txt). Add these top-level properties to your project config:

```js
// defines the languages that a user can select for a document
settings: {
  languages: {
    // defines the languages that a user can select for a document
    available: [{
      label: {en: 'German', de: 'Deutsch'},
      locale: 'de'
    },
    {
      label: {en: 'English', de: 'Englisch'},
      locale: 'en'
    }],
    // used to create new documents
    defaultLanguage: {
      label: {en: 'German', de: 'Deutsch'},
      locale: 'de'
    },
  }
}
```

The `defaultLanguage` defines with what language a new document is created. The `available` defines the set of
languages from which a user can choose. The `defaultLanguage` must be contained in the `available`.

### Metadata

The language of a document is stored within the documents metadata. In order to enable this, we need to add a metadata field for every [content-type](/reference/project-config/content-types/llms.txt) that we want to have in multiple languages. An example is given below.

```js
metadata: [
  {
    handle: 'language',
    plugin: 'li-language',
    ui: {
      config: {
        label: 'Language',
        placeholder: 'select language..'
      }
    }
  }
]
```

There are several important things to note in the example:

1. the metadata plugin used is `li-language`, this is a core metadata plugin that enables multi-language
2. the use of `li-language` **must be unique within a content-type**, i.e. you can only have one metadata property in a content-type that uses the `li-language` plugin

Once you have the metadata field defined on the content-type, you also need to update your custom Elasticsearch metadata mapping with an entry as follows:

```json
{
  "properties": {
    "language": {
      "type": "object",
      "properties": {
        "locale": {"type": "string"},
        "label": {"type": "string"} // deprecated, will be removed in release-2024-01
      }
    }
  }
}
```

The details about adding a new metadata field can be seen in the [metadata examples](/guides/documents/metadata/metadata-examples/llms.txt)

### Dashboard

As soon as we have the multi-language feature configured, the dashboard will show a new column `languages` in the search results.
In order for the dashboard to have the required metadata, you will need to configure the [`documentsMetadataFields`](/customising/server-configuration/llms.txt) in the server config to include your metadata property. You need to use the metadata property name here. In our example from before this would be:

```js
{
  search: {
    documentsMetadataFields: ['language']
  }
}
```

Note: if you did your [own dashboard item](/guides/editor/push-notifications/llms.txt#add-a-custom-dashboard-item), the language column will not work out-of-the-box and you will need to customize your dashboard item to show the language

## Editor

The editor side is relatively easy to configure. You only need to add the provided language [display filter](/customising/advanced/editor-configuration/display-filter/llms.txt) to your dashboard so that you are able to filter documents by language. This is done in the editor environment config file.

```js
{
  filters: {
    articleList: {
      displayFilters: ['language']
    }
  }
}
```

Equivalently for pages if you want to have it there too.