The latest articles on DEV Community by Global Auto (@globalautoexport). https://dev.to/globalautoexport https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4221763%2F0dcd1c83-ac11-40ad-809f-609dc40353d2.png https://dev.to/globalautoexport en Global Auto Mon, 02 Nov 2026 07:52:32 +0000 https://dev.to/globalautoexport/shipping-a-multilingual-b2b-catalogue-five-things-that-broke-51e2 https://dev.to/globalautoexport/shipping-a-multilingual-b2b-catalogue-five-things-that-broke-51e2 <p>When we built a multilingual catalogue for a vehicle export business — English, Spanish, French, Russian, Portuguese, Arabic and Chinese — most of the work was not translation. It was the plumbing around it.</p> <p><strong>1. hreflang is easy to get wrong.</strong> Every page needs the full set of alternate links, including a self-reference, and the codes must match the language and region pairs you actually publish. A missing self-reference silently drops the whole cluster.</p> <p><strong>2. Arabic needs RTL at the layout level, not the string level.</strong> Direction belongs on the html element, and every icon that implies order — arrows, progress, breadcrumbs — has to flip.</p> <p><strong>3. Locale-specific pricing and dimensions.</strong> Unit systems, currency separators and number formatting vary enough that hard-coded strings break by the third market.</p> <p><strong>4. Keep the URL structure flat.</strong> /en/vehicles.html beats query parameters, both for crawling and for anyone reading analytics.</p> <p><strong>5. Static generation keeps it fast.</strong> The catalogue is static HTML with no client-side routing, which makes the hreflang cluster cheap to maintain.</p> <p>The current iteration is live at <a href="https://global-auto.nichemarketfinder.com/en/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer">China vehicle exporter</a> if anyone wants to look at the structure.</p> frontend html seo webdev