Adding a second language to a website is a checklist problem, not a philosophy problem. Below is the order I actually go through when shipping an English + Chinese site, from picking the right script to the last test before launch.
1. Decide: Simplified or Traditional Chinese (maybe both)
This is the first decision and the one most sites get wrong by skipping it entirely. Simplified Chinese is what's used in mainland China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese is what's used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau — and while the two are related, sending Simplified text to a Taiwanese reader reads as foreign, not just unfamiliar.
If your market is mainland Chinese buyers or businesses, build in Simplified. If it's Taiwan or Hong Kong, build in Traditional. If your audience genuinely spans both, you eventually want both — but ship the one that matches your primary market first rather than trying to do both from day one.
2. Get a real translation, not just machine output
Machine translation has gotten good enough to be a usable first draft, but it still gets tone, idiom, and business terminology wrong often enough that customer-facing copy needs a human pass. Budget for a translator or a fluent bilingual reviewer to check your homepage, pricing, and any legal text before launch — those are the three pages a mistranslation will actually cost you a customer on.
3. Pick a URL structure and stick to it
The three common options are a subdirectory (example.com/zh), a subdomain (zh.example.com), or a separate ccTLD (example.cn). For most small businesses, a subdirectory is the right default: it's the simplest to set up, and it keeps all your site's SEO value under one domain instead of splitting it across two.
4. Implement hreflang correctly (or skip it — don't half-do it)
If you have two language versions of the same page, Google's documentation is specific about two rules: every page must reference itself, and every page must reference every other language version — not just link one way. Get this wrong and Google may serve the wrong language version to the wrong searchers, which defeats the entire point of translating in the first place.
If you're not ready to implement this correctly, it's better to skip hreflang tags entirely for now than to add a broken, one-directional version.
5. Handle Chinese typography properly
English fonts don't render Chinese characters well, and vice versa — you need a font stack that includes a proper CJK (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) typeface for the Chinese version, with enough line-height that characters don't feel cramped. This is a five-minute CSS fix if you know to look for it, and an obvious tell to native readers if you don't.
6. Localize more than the sentences
Dates, phone number formats, and currency symbols often get missed even on sites that translate every sentence correctly. If you list prices, make sure the Chinese version either converts currency or clearly states it's in USD — don't leave a $ sign next to text and assume it reads the same way to every visitor.
7. Build the language switch so it's obvious, not clever
A visible language toggle in the header, not a hidden dropdown or an auto-redirect based on browser locale alone, respects the visitor's choice. Auto-detection is a reasonable default, but always let the visitor override it — nothing frustrates a bilingual reader faster than being stuck on the wrong version with no way to switch.
8. Keep translations in one place you can actually maintain
If your site is a small, mostly-static set of pages, the simplest system is one structured file per language with every string of text in it — no database, no plugin, no per-word billing. When you update the English homepage copy, you have one obvious place to go update the Chinese version too, instead of hunting through a CMS or a translation dashboard.
If your site is a large, constantly-updated blog with a content team, a plugin-based translation management system is the more realistic tool — this checklist assumes a fixed set of pages, not a newsroom.
9. Test on an actual device with the actual language set
Before launch, load both language versions on a real phone, not just a desktop browser at 100% zoom. Check that the language switch works, that CJK line breaks don't awkwardly split words, and that nothing overflows a button or nav item — Chinese and English strings for the same sentence are rarely the same length.
10. Have a native speaker do a final pass
Even with a good translator, a native-speaking reader — not necessarily a professional translator, just a fluent one — will catch anything that reads slightly off in a way a non-native reviewer can't. This is a ten-minute favor to ask a friend or colleague, and it's cheap insurance against launching copy that quietly embarrasses the business.
Where this shows up in practice
Both templates we sell were built following this exact checklist, mainly because we wanted to prove it worked before shipping it to anyone else. SaaS Starter and Realty Starter ship with English and Simplified Chinese out of the box, a visible language switch, and every string of copy in a single file per language — so the maintenance step in item 8 above is already built in rather than something you have to design yourself.
The one-line version
Treat "add Chinese" as ten small, checkable decisions instead of one big project — the two decisions that actually break sites are picking the wrong script for your audience and half-implementing hreflang, and both are avoidable by going through this list once before you launch.
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