Languages

A multilingual Jx site keeps each language in its own directory — pages/fr-ca/about.json beside pages/about.json — and that is the whole mapping. There is no message catalogue and no t() : a translation is a different file , so Studio's job is to show you which files exist, which do not, and which have fallen behind.

Every surface here appears only once project.json declares more than one locale.

Declare the languages first

Project Settings › Locales is where the list lives. Add a tag, pick which one is the default, and choose how locales appear in URLs:

Routing	`/about` is	`/fr-ca/about` is
Prefix every locale but the default	English	French
Prefix every locale	nothing	French

Tags are BCP 47 and validated as you type, by the same parser the build uses — so a tag Studio accepts is a tag that builds. en_US is refused with a sentence rather than written and discovered later.

Tip

⌘K → Add Language does the same write. It is the one language command available in a project that has none yet — which is exactly where you need it.

Languages panel: what exists, what doesn't

⌘K → Show Translation Parity opens Languages in the Navigator. It is a grid: one row per page, one column per language, and one of three answers in every cell.

Cell	Means	Clicking it
present	the file is there	opens it
stale	it is there, and older than the page it was translated from	opens it
missing	it is not there, and this is where it would go	creates it, and opens it

A page whose URL is translated still counts as one page: the panel reads the same $translationKey the build does, so pages/fr-ca/a-propos.json sits in the French column of pages/about.json 's row rather than starting a row of its own.

This is the one thing the rest of the toolchain cannot tell you. A build is perfectly happy to ship a French page that went wrong six months ago — and the hreflang links will dutifully advertise it. The Files panel draws fr-ca/ the way it draws any folder, and a page nobody has translated is invisible precisely because the file that would prove it doesn't exist.

Note

Stale means the default language's file is newer than the translation. A file your platform reports no timestamp for is shown as present, never stale — an absent timestamp isn't evidence of being behind.

The panel has no rail button on purpose: a language grid shouldn't cost a rail slot in every monolingual project, or push every document panel's ⌘1 – ⌘8 chord along by one.

Side by side

Split a pane and choose Same page in ⟨language⟩ from the derive menu — the same menu that gives you Code, Layout and the component definition. The second pane follows the first: move the source pane to another page and the companion moves with it, to that page's translation.

Because a translation is a different file, the companion opens it rather than re-rendering the one you have. If it doesn't exist yet the pane says so and names the fix, instead of going blank under a chip claiming a language.

Rendering language

The pane context bar's Language segment ( ⌘K → Set Rendering Language ) is a different thing, and worth keeping straight:

Control	Changes
Same page in (pane)	which file the pane is showing
Language (context)	the `lang` and `dir` the artboard draws in

The second is how you check that a right-to-left language actually mirrors. It sets the language the canvas renders as — the text is whatever file is open, and the control says so. It's the same axis as breakpoint and colour scheme: a preview state, stored with the tab.

The bar only names a language when it differs from the document's own, so a French page open in a French pane reads as it always did.

Finding files by language

The Library has a Language facet and column, and the Files tree tags each row with the language of the directory it sits under — in that language's own name, français rather than French .

Commands

Command	Does
Add Language	appends a tag to `i18n.locales`
Show Translation Parity	opens the Languages panel
Open Translation	opens this page's file in another language
Create Translation	creates the missing file, seeded from this one, and opens it
Set Rendering Language	sets the language the pane's artboard renders as

Locales and languages — what the framework does with all this at build time
Browse the library — the Language facet
Project settings — the rest of project.json