Planning tools for multilingual websites

What each tool does

How they handle your data

All four are programs that run in your browser. They make no network requests with what you type, they set no cookies, and they do not store your entries between visits. Exports are created in your browser and saved straight to your device. If you close the page, your entries are gone.

That design has a limit worth knowing: the tools can only check what can be checked without fetching anything. The hreflang planner, for example, checks the codes and structure of the set you enter, but it does not visit your pages to see whether the annotations are actually published or whether the addresses answer. A full check of a live site is part of our hreflang set-up service.

Where the rules come from

Each tool applies rules from published sources, which the matching guide cites in full.

• The hreflang planner follows Google's documentation on localized versions: ISO 639-1 language codes, optional ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 regions, the reserved x-default value and the requirement that every version lists every other ¹.
• The checklist draws on Google's guidance on multilingual sites ², the W3C's articles on language tags and right-to-left markup ³, WCAG 2.2 on page language ⁴, and the Confederation's summary of price display rules ⁵.
• The project planner does arithmetic on your numbers. It deliberately gives no prices, because translators set their own.
• The language demo uses your browser's built-in locale data for formats, which is why its output can differ from one browser to another.

Sample text in the demo

The six phrases in the language demo, and the sample page on our home page, are short samples written to show length and direction. Each appearance carries a sample label. Have a translator check any phrase like them before it goes on a real site.

Using the tools without JavaScript

With JavaScript switched off, the checklist still shows all thirty-three checks as a list you can tick or print, and each tool page explains in text what the tool would do. The planner and demo need JavaScript for their calculations and switching.

Accessibility

The tools are built as ordinary forms: every field has a visible label, every control can be reached and used with the keyboard, focus is always visible, and results are announced to screen readers through a live region. Our accessibility statement lists what has been tested and what has not.

Suggestions

If a check is missing from the checklist or a code is handled wrongly by the planner, tell us through the contact page. Corrections to the tools are recorded in the same way as corrections to the guides, as described in the editorial policy.