Hugo Multilingual Collection Translation: Solving the Language Switcher Issue With Different Display Names

The Problem

In FixIt theme, collections are a custom taxonomy. If Chinese and English posts use different collection names:

# zh-CN
collections: ["Quadlet 配置分享"]

# en
collections: ["Quadlet Config Sharing"]

The language switcher on /collections/ pages and post pages disappears. Hugo treats them as two separate taxonomy terms, so .IsTranslated and .AllTranslations return nothing.

Currently using Hugo v0.160.1.

The Solution

The approach is straightforward: use the same collection name across all languages, and let _index.md provide localized display titles.

Take the quadlet-config-sharing collection as an example. Create:

content/collections/quadlet-config-sharing/
├── _index.zh-CN.md
└── _index.en.md

_index.zh-CN.md:

---
title: "Quadlet 配置分享"
---

_index.en.md:

---
title: "Quadlet Config Sharing"
---

• Both languages share the URL /collections/quadlet-config-sharing/ (determined by the directory name)
• The Chinese display name is “Quadlet 配置分享”
• The English display name is “Quadlet Config Sharing”
• No translationKey needed - same term name, Hugo auto-links them

Post Configuration

Both language versions use the same collection name in frontmatter:

# xxx.en.md
collections: ["quadlet-config-sharing"]

# xxx.zh-CN.md
collections: ["quadlet-config-sharing"]

That’s it. The language switcher will work normally across all collection pages and posts.