I don’t want one same post to be translated into different versions – URL issue

  • Resolved veronicagomezvg

    (@veronicagomezvg)


    3 years, 10 months ago

    Hello, i need some help with the following issue…

    I’m creating a language learning website, it has English lessons, French lessons and other languages.

    When it comes to the people that speak english, they are supposed to see he content in English and access the lessons to learn Spanish and French. The people from South America, for example, they see content written in Spanish to learn English and French.

    The problem i’m facing is about the URL, i don’t want one same post to be transtaled into different versions, i only want one version of each and the this is what is happening:

    The english version: https://www.website.com/spanish/spanish-a1/Lesson-Name

    With the subdirectory: https://www.website.com/es/spanish/spanish-a1/Lesson-Name

    I’m afraid that might cause duplicate content because it’s the same post with different URLs

    I understand the soulution given in most cases is to translate it like this:

    example.com/hello-world
    example.com/es/hola-mundo

    But it’s not my case because i don’t want one same article translated into several versions because you can’t teach languages the same way to different countries or people, the source language and grammar rules vary.

    My questions are, does it really cause duplicate content? If it does, what is the solution?

    And, does translate press take care of the “hreflang attribute”? or do i need to add it so the content will only appear in the countries where the specified language is spoken?

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

  • Hello there,

    I’m not sure if this is what you want, but if you want to exclude a page from having the translated versions, you can do go to: Settings -> TranslatePress -> Advanced tab -> Exclude strings -> Do not translate certain paths.
    Select the “Exclude Paths From Translation” option and add the path of the page that you don’t want to have translated versions.

    As for your worry about duplicate content, we’re clearly defining the language and offer the alternative languages in the HTML, so google should know these are not duplicate content pages, but translated versions. The only bad thing that can happen is for those untranslated pages to simply not rank as good in the short term.

    TranslatePress adds extra region independent hreflang tags, along with region dependent. They point to the same page.
    The region independent language tags help search engines provide the correct link to visitors without country specification or with a different country specification than those available.

    Best regards,
    Cristian

    Thread Starter veronicagomezvg

    (@veronicagomezvg)

    Thank you Cristian, i just did that and solved part of the issue but i still have other doubts, i hope you can help me with this.

    I solved this part: I configured it so it only translates the pages for spanish speakers users to learn English and French and also to translate the homepage. That way, english speakers will only have this version:

    https://www.website.com/spanish/spanish-a1/Lesson-Name (without that /es/ in the URL)

    But now, the version of spanish speakers that do have the /es/ in the URL appear with and without the /Es/ meaning, both links take to the same page or post.

    Having the possibility of duplicate content in mind, i did my reseach and found in one of Translatepress blogs, that there are manual ways to solve it with the hreflang tag and that the pluging itself does it directly, i thought, “Ok, great, it’s already done”

    But at the end, in the comment section, someone asked if it actually does that and someone from your team said the following:

    You don’t need to do anything. The sitemap will work once you have the SEO pack add-on installed. If Google finds the translated page, it will index it, but some of the data will be in the original language. The SEO Pack add-on also solves this issue.

    So my question is, if i don’t have the paid version, i would need to do it manually, right?

    So between the links:

    https://www.website.com/es/ingles/ingles-a1/Pronombres-personales

    https://www.website.com/ingles/ingles-a1/Pronombres-personales

    spanish speakers would only find thes /es/ version.

    Hello @veronicagomezvg ,

    I’m really sorry for the late reply.

    Actually, Translatepress is making sure that the hreflang is properly set even in the free version. The SEO Pack add-on is adding sitemap support for different SEO plugins and it also lets you translate metadata (like title, description) and even the slug of the page. You can read more about it here: https://translatepress.com/docs/addons/seo-pack/

    As I said in the first message, you don’t have to worry about duplicate content because TranslatePress (even without SEO Pack) is making sure that the hreflang is properly set.

    Best regards,
    Cristian

    Thread Starter veronicagomezvg

    (@veronicagomezvg)

    That’s great, i’m glad it’s already taken care of.

    I will take this space to ask you just one more question.

    My default language is English and my second is Spanish and because the pluging does not offer the “Spanish LA” (Latina America) i chose the one called Spanish (Mexico).

    Does that mean my spanish pages, posts and others will only appear to users in Mexico or to everyone whose language is Spanish, from everything in Latina America and Spain? i ask because you have options for several spanish speaking countries like Ecuador, Venezuela, etc.

    I want to make sure.

    Hello @veronicagomezvg,

    I’m really sorry for the late reply.

    You don’t have to worry about that. The page will be available for all users no matter what Spanish language they are using. The only problem that can happen is related to the indexing of your pages for different users depending on their local language.

    Also, if you want to, you can add a custom language following those explanations: https://translatepress.com/docs/developers/add-custom-language/

    Best regards,
    Cristian

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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