Writing in more than one language

Each garden has a language. It sets the wording of everything sizuq itself puts on the page — the menu, the dates, the reading time — and it tells search engines what they are looking at.

By default it is only a starting point. A visitor can switch, and a drop written in the other language is shown in the language it was written in. If you would rather the garden never budge, there is a setting to hold it to one language for everyone.

Each drop records the language you wrote it in, set in the Details card while you write. sizuq guesses as you type and offers to correct itself, but the decision is yours.

It matters more than it looks. A drop's language decides which of your gardens is treated as its home, which in turn decides the address search engines keep.

A drop can carry a version of itself in another language — a title and a body you write yourself. Nothing is translated for you.

There is only one address either way. A reader arriving at the drop is shown whichever version matches the language they are being served, and the original when there is no match. Search engines are told about both, so each language can be found on its own terms.

The fuller arrangement is two gardens — one per language, each on its own address — linked to each other. A menu entry then lets a reader move between them, and search engines treat the pair as one site in two languages.

• The two gardens must be in different languages. A garden can be paired with one other, and pairing is mutual — linking A to B links B to A.
• Whatever look you set on one is applied to the other, so the pair stays visually one site.
• Menu links, pinned drops and uploaded logos stay separate, because those are language, or a choice each editor should make.

Once paired, each drop settles on the garden matching the language it was written in. An article in one language canonically belongs to that garden, and its counterpart to the other, without you having to decide drop by drop.