Multilingual website development in Estonia

Why businesses in Estonia need more than one language

According to the 2021 census, Estonian is the mother tongue of about two thirds of residents and Russian of nearly a third. Around half the population speaks English as a foreign language, rising to the vast majority among young people. Add tourists, international professionals and customers from neighbouring countries.

For an international company or a business run by expats, an English-only site misses most local customers searching in Estonian or Russian. For a hotel, restaurant or tour operator, the reverse is true — without English, visitors simply book elsewhere.

Estonian is required; other languages are added to it

According to the Estonian Language Board, a public-facing website in a foreign language run by a company registered in Estonia must include at least summary information in Estonian, and product information in an online shop must also be available in Estonian. In practice, the Estonian version is the base and English and Russian are built alongside it.

How a multilingual site works technically

• each language version has its own URL, such as /en/services, /et/teenused and /uslugi, rather than one page that swaps its text;
• hreflang annotations link the language versions of each page, with x-default for everyone else;
• unique titles and meta descriptions in every language, not translations of one another;
• the language switcher opens the same page in another language, not the home page;
• no automatic redirects based on browser language — Google advises leaving the choice to the visitor;
• the sitemap lists every language version.

Translations written by people, not machines

An Estonian speaker searches for “kodulehe tegemine”, a Russian speaker in Tallinn for “создание сайта”, an expat for “website development Estonia”. A line-by-line translation misses these phrases and reads as foreign — and Estonian readers spot calques instantly.

Each version is therefore written for its own language: the same facts, but its own headings, keywords and tone of address. Machine translation can serve as a first draft, but nothing is published until a fluent writer of that language has reviewed it.

Three ways to offer several languages

An admin panel in three languages

In the admin panel, every page, service and product has fields for each language. Shared details such as prices and photos are entered once, while texts are edited per language. Enquiries from any version arrive in the same Telegram chat and inbox, and booking confirmations reach customers in the language they booked in.

It is good practice to update all versions together: if your terms or a service description change in one language, check the others too. Otherwise customers reading an outdated version may simply choose a competitor.

Common multilingual website mistakes

• flags instead of language names — a flag stands for a country, not a language;
• mixed languages on one page, with untranslated buttons and forms;
• identical titles in every language, or none at all on secondary versions;
• an English version that is a literal translation without English search phrases;
• a language switcher that always sends visitors to the home page.

What affects the cost of a multilingual website

• the number of languages and pages;
• who writes the copy: the studio, your translator or you;
• whether keyword research is needed for each language;
• whether a product catalogue is translated and how often it changes.