Internationalization
2025/03/15

Internationalization

Support multiple languages in your documentation

Before you get started

Fumadocs is not a full-powered i18n library, it manages only its own components and utilities.

You can use other libraries like next-intl for the rest of your app. Read the Next.js Docs to learn more about implementing I18n in Next.js.

Manual Setup

Define the i18n configurations in a file, we will import it with @/ilb/i18n in this guide.

Pass it to the source loader.

lib/source.ts
import { i18n } from '@/lib/i18n';
import { loader } from 'fumadocs-core/source';

export const source = loader({
  i18n, 
  // other options
});

And update Fumadocs UI layout options.

app/layout.config.tsx
import { i18n } from '@/lib/i18n';
import type { BaseLayoutProps } from 'fumadocs-ui/layouts/shared';

export function baseOptions(locale: string): BaseLayoutProps {
  return {
    i18n,
    // different props based on `locale`
  };
}

Middleware

Create a middleware that redirects users to appropriate locale.

{
  "file": "../../examples/i18n/middleware.ts",
  "codeblock": {
    "lang": "ts",
    "meta": "title=\"middleware.ts\""
  }
}

See Middleware for customisable options.

Note that this is optional, you can also use your own middleware or the one provided by i18n libraries.

Routing

Create a /app/[lang] folder, and move all files (e.g. page.tsx, layout.tsx) from /app to the folder.

Wrap the root provider inside I18nProvider, and provide available languages & translations to it. Note that only English translations are provided by default.

app/[lang]/layout.tsx
import { RootProvider } from 'fumadocs-ui/provider';
import { I18nProvider, type Translations } from 'fumadocs-ui/i18n';

const cn: Partial<Translations> = {
  search: 'Translated Content',
  // other translations
};

// available languages that will be displayed on UI
// make sure `locale` is consistent with your i18n config
const locales = [
  {
    name: 'English',
    locale: 'en',
  },
  {
    name: 'Chinese',
    locale: 'cn',
  },
];

export default async function RootLayout({
  params,
  children,
}: {
  params: Promise<{ lang: string }>;
  children: React.ReactNode;
}) {
  const lang = (await params).lang;

  return (
    <html lang={lang}>
      <body>
        <I18nProvider
          locale={lang}
          locales={locales}
          translations={{ cn }[lang]}
        >
          <RootProvider>{children}</RootProvider>
        </I18nProvider>
      </body>
    </html>
  );
}

Pass Locale

Pass the locale to Fumadocs in your pages and layouts.

Configure i18n on your search solution.

  • Built-in Search (Orama): For Supported Languages, no further changes are needed.

    Otherwise, additional config is required (e.g. Chinese & Japanese). See Special Languages.

  • Cloud Solutions (e.g. Algolia): They usually have official support for multilingual.

Writing Documents

Fumadocs only handles navigation for its own layouts (e.g. sidebar). For other places, you can use the useParams hook to get the locale from url, and attend it to href.

import Link from 'next/link';
import { useParams } from 'next/navigation';

const { lang } = useParams();

return <Link href={`/${lang}/another-page`}>This is a link</Link>;

In addition, the fumadocs-core/dynamic-link component supports dynamic hrefs, you can use it to attend the locale prefix. It is useful for Markdown/MDX content.

content.mdx
import { DynamicLink } from 'fumadocs-core/dynamic-link';

<DynamicLink href="/[lang]/another-page">This is a link</DynamicLink>
All Posts

More Posts

Newsletter

Join the community

Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest news and updates