How Weglot
technically works
A developer’s look at Weglot’s reverse proxy solution and JavaScript integration.
Reverse proxy solution
Configure Weglot’s Content Delivery Network for a fully translated website in minutes. Choose between our "subdomain" and "subdirectory" based on how you want the translated pages to appear.
For example, "https://fr.yoursite.com" or "https://yoursite.com/fr." For subdomain mode, you'll edit your DNS settings to create specific subdomains for each new language and point them to the Weglot servers.
For subdirectory mode, you can choose between 2 integrations:
Standard Subdirectory
You will point your main DNS directly to Weglot servers.
Custom Subdirectory
If you use your own reverse proxy (CDN, Nginx, ...), you can configure routing to only send the language-related URL to Weglot. This feature is available for Enterprise only.
Any request for a translated version of your website will deliver blazing fast results to your customer in their native language. Plus, a layer of cache on top of the Weglot translation API means if the exact same translation request is sent twice, it will remember the answer and send it back to you instantly. Weglot’s reverse proxy solution provides you with a fully SEO-friendly version of your website that’s easily indexed by global search engines.
The same applies to AI crawlers. Because translations are written into the page source before it reaches the visitor, the bots behind ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google's AI tools read a complete translated page rather than an untranslated one. But for this to happen, your original site needs to serve its content server-side. A site built purely in React, Vue or Angular without a framework like Next.js or Nuxt returns an empty page to crawlers in any language; this is something translation doesn't change.
Website
Visitor
Website visitor asks for a page of your website in French. The subdomain fr. points to the Weglot Reverse Proxy Server.
Weglot Reverse Proxy
Weglot Reverse Proxy makes a HTTPs call to your original website.
Your
Origin
Your website sends back the original HTML page (non-translated).
Weglot
API
Weglot Reverse Proxy sends the content of that page to Weglot API to retrieve the translations
Response
Weglot Reverse Proxy sends back a response to the visitor’s browser
Website
Visitor
Website visitor asks for a page of your website in French. The subdirectory /fr/ points to the Weglot Reverse Proxy Server.
Weglot Reverse Proxy
Weglot Reverse Proxy makes a HTTPs call to your origin endpoint (An IP or a CNAME entry).
Your
Origin
Your website sends back the original HTML page (non-translated).
Weglot
API
Weglot Reverse Proxy sends the content of that page to Weglot API to retrieve the translations
Response
Weglot Reverse Proxy sends back a response to the visitor’s browser
Website
Visitor
Website visitor asks for a translated page. The request hits your Reverse Proxy.
Your Reverse Proxy
For a translated page, the request is routed to Weglot Reverse Proxy, through a URL like : render.weglot.io/htt
ps://mysite.com/fr/
accueil
Weglot Reverse Proxy
Weglot RP fetches the original page by making a HTTPs call to https://mysite.com/
home (*)
Your
Origin
This calls lands again on your reverse proxy and goes to your origin endpoint as it's a non-translated page this time. Weglot RP receive the original HTML page.
Weglot
API
Weglot Reverse Proxy sends the content of that page to Weglot API to retrieve the translations.
Return
Page
Weglot RP sends back a response to your reverse proxy with the translated page. Your reverse proxy sends back the response to the browser.
JavaScript integration
The Weglot JavaScript integration is the fastest and simplest way to set up translations for your website. By just copy-pasting a few lines of JavaScript, you can translate any website in seconds. It’s best used for testing, when you don’t need to be visible on global search engines or when you want to translate private content.
The translations are fetched and then inserted into the page by the browser after it has downloaded the page source.
This means the translations are not stored in any source code and therefore not detected by search engines.
Website
Visitor
Website visitor asks for a page on your website.
Your
Server
Your server sends the page back to the website visitor’s browser in the original language, with a script tag calling the Weglot JS library.
Library
The library detects the user language, based on their choice or their locale, gathers all the content, and sends it to the Weglot Translation API.
Translation
The Weglot Translation API sends the translations back, and the Weglot JS library swaps the original content for the translations.
Automated features
A website translation solution with zero developer effort
Documentation
Read more on our dedicated developer documentation
Technical FAQ
Weglot proxy server reliability and availability
The Weglot proxy server is hosted on servers distributed in locations around the world. Your website visitors will have a fast, secure, and seamless experience when it comes to viewing your site in their language as they’ll be closer to the source of data. Weglot has a 99% uptime SLA.
Where does the data get stored?
Your translations are stored on the Weglot database. The Weglot database is fully backed up daily.
What data do you store?
Weglot stores all the HTML fragments it translates as well as their translations. It also stores data associated with your project settings, such as glossary rules. You can exclude translations by URL or more finely by CSS selector in order to avoid sending confidential data, such as personally identifiable information (PII), to Weglot.
By default after a project is removed at the termination of the contract, any stored data is removed after 180 days of inactivity – this can be deleted sooner upon request.
Is Weglot GDPR compliant?
Yes, no user data is stored by Weglot. Our translation database is located in AWS Frankfurt.
What are Weglot’s service hours?
Weglot’s service is 24/7 with a 99% service level guarantee.
Is it translated via proxy?
Yes. Weglot reverse proxy servers will automatically retrieve your website pages, detect the original content and swap it for translations.
Does Weglot have an API?
Yes – You can translate any content by directly calling our API. Read our API documentation for more information.
Which DNS entries need to be added?
It depends on what you want URLs to look like for your users.
If you want to use subdomains and have your Spanish-translated products page available on es.example.com/product, you’ll need to create 1 CNAME record per translated language and associated subdomain and point them to websites.weglot.com.
If you want to use subdirectories, and have your translated products page available on example.com/es/product, you'll need to edit your website's main DNS record and point it to Weglot's servers. You’ll get precise instructions during onboarding.
Can AI crawlers read Weglot's translated pages?
With subdomain or subdirectory integration, yes. Weglot translates server-side, so the translated text sits in the HTML your server returns. This is important as most AI crawlers, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot, read raw HTML and do not execute JavaScript. Content that only appears after the browser runs a script is invisible to them.
Do AI crawlers treat my translated pages the same way Googlebot does?
Not entirely. Googlebot renders JavaScript on a second pass and uses hreflang to match a page's language to a searcher's. Most AI crawlers don't render JavaScript, so they only read what the server returns directly. It isn't publicly documented whether or not they use hreflang, and testing suggests ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity often return the source-language URL even when hreflang is correctly implemented.
Weglot's subdomain and subdirectory integrations give each language a dedicated URL with the translated content in the page source, and add hreflang for Google, Bing, and the AI search interfaces built on them, like AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Copilot.
Ready to get started?
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