14 · Language versions

A language is a separate deployment on its own subdomain, with its own database and its own content directory. The engine translates nothing and does not pretend to know what corresponds to what — it is handed a list of versions and recognises itself among them by address.

Entries are linked by a key: a fixed identifier, the same on both sides, independent of the address in the content's language. The language switch leads from an entry to its counterpart, and where no counterpart exists, to the other version's home page rather than into a void. There is no map of addresses here that would need updating by hand after every change of title.

The interface's own strings — buttons, labels, footer — are a separate set that the instance supplies in its language. Without that, an English site would carry a Polish install button, which showed itself immediately with the first non-Polish version.