A Trap We Fell Into With Wix Multilingual — Blog Posts and the Homepage Work Completely Differently
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
Our blog runs in four languages — Japanese, English, Korean, Chinese — but recently someone pointed out that the Korean and Chinese versions of the homepage were still in Japanese. Digging into it, I found that Wix handles multilingual support completely differently for blog posts versus the homepage. Recording the investigation here, in case it helps anyone running or considering a multilingual site.
The trigger: /ko loaded, but the content was still Japanese
Visiting https://www.robin-planning.com/ko, the page itself loads fine. Even the blog post listing ("Recent Posts") shows the article titles correctly in Korean.
But the homepage's own text — the hero heading, the service descriptions, the company overview — was all still in Japanese. Key copy like "Technology and ideas that lead your business transformation to success" was showing in Japanese on what's supposed to be the Korean page.
The cause: blog posts and site pages are translated through completely different mechanisms
My first thought was that the multilingual settings themselves were wrong. But checking the site settings, the language configuration was actually correct: Japanese as the primary language, English via subdomain (en.robin-planning.com), Korean and Chinese via subdirectory (/ko, /zh) — exactly as intended.
The problem wasn't the settings — it was how different content types get handled.
Blog posts: managed as independent data per language
Wix's blog feature has a dedicated API for managing posts (the Draft Posts API). By giving a post a "translation group ID," you can create and publish independent Japanese, English, Korean, and Chinese versions as separate pieces of data. Our blog posts get translated in bulk, from outside the platform, using exactly this mechanism.
Site pages: treated as elements inside the editor
A regular site page like the homepage, on the other hand, is treated as "part of a design" you assembled by dragging and dropping in the Wix editor. Each text element — a heading, a paragraph — isn't so much an independent piece of content as a component embedded in the page's layout.
Because of this difference, blog posts can be read and written by an external program, but there's no way to write multilingual text into site pages from outside. Checking Wix's official docs, there is an API for handling multilingual content (wix-window.Multilingual), but it's explicitly documented as usable "only in front-end code" — meaning it only works from code running inside the site itself.
So how do you fix it: use the Translation Editor
In the end, translating site pages requires manually translating each piece by hand. But there's a more efficient way than clicking around the page in the Wix editor: a dedicated screen called the "Translation Editor."
1. Open "Translation Editor" from the site dashboard
2. Select the target language (Korean / Chinese) at the top left
3. Choose "Page content" to see a list of untranslated text on that page
4. Filter by "Untranslated" to quickly surface items you've missed
5. Enter your translation in each field, or click "Machine translate" to generate a draft and touch it up
Compared to clicking through individual elements in the editor, being able to surface only the untranslated items in a list makes it much easier to catch what you've missed. Generating a machine-translated draft first and then polishing the awkward parts turned out to be the fastest approach.
You can't skip the translation work itself, but you can cut down a lot of the effort spent hunting for "where haven't I translated yet." If you're running a multilingual site and have a nagging feeling something's untranslated somewhere, checking this list view first is the way to go.
Things worth remembering when building a multilingual site
・Blog posts and site pages (home, company overview, etc.) fundamentally differ in how Wix handles multilingual support internally
・Site page translation can't be automated via external tools or APIs — it has to be checked by eye, one piece at a time
・"The page loads but the content isn't translated" is usually not a multilingual configuration mistake — it just means the translation work isn't finished yet
・Before going live, always visit the actual URLs (/ko, /zh, etc.) yourself and check visually
In our case, we'd put all our effort into translating articles and missed checking the translation of the homepage itself — the foundation of the site. I came away realizing that multilingual support isn't something you finish by configuring it once; it's an ongoing, hands-on process, and understanding that the translation mechanism differs by page type matters.
Summary
1. Wix handles multilingual support differently for blog posts versus site pages
2. Blog posts can be translated externally via API, but site pages require manual translation in the editor
3. The Translation Editor's "untranslated" filter helps efficiently surface missed translations
4. After publishing, always visit each language's URL yourself to check the actual display
If you need help building or running a multilingual site, feel free to contact Robin Planning LLC. We can help, drawing on the pitfalls we've hit ourselves running our own 4-language blog.
Want to go deeper on this topic
If you want to learn Wix site operation more systematically, a book like the following can help.
Yusuke Aizawa／Cutt System ／ A thorough walkthrough of Wix's basic operations, from choosing a template to layout adjustments. Good for anyone who wants to systematically cover the editor basics.
* The link above is an Amazon Associate link. Revenue from this blog goes toward running costs.
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