> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.tied.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Locales and translations > Running a portal in several languages. A portal declares which locales it allows and which one is the default. Every category and article in that portal has to live inside that declared set — you can't write a category in a locale the portal hasn't opted into. ## Root and associated, not copies — for articles [The parent page](/help-center) already covers the core idea: a translation is linked to a root, not duplicated as an independent page. Here's what that link actually does for **articles**. Categories work differently — see the warning below. Articles carry a root reference and a set of items associated back to it. When you create an article translation, you point it at *any* existing member of the family: the root itself, or one of its existing translations. Tied resolves the real root automatically and links the new one directly to it. A translation family stays one level deep: whichever member you point a new translation at, Tied links it to the root. A translation family stays one level deep: whichever member you point a new translation at, Tied links it to the root. **This is what stops article translation chains from forming.** You can never end up with a Spanish translation of a French translation of the English original — pointing a new article translation at the Spanish version still links it straight to the English root, however deep the family already is. **Categories don't get this guarantee.** A category translation writes its root association straight from what you submit, with no automatic resolution — so pointing a new category translation at an existing translation, rather than at the root, links it to that translation instead, and a translation chain can form. Always point a category translation at its actual root yourself — Tied won't correct it for you the way it does for articles. Because a category's slug only has to be unique within its own portal *and* locale, a translated category can keep the exact same slug as its root — they're different rows, not competing for the same URL. ## Where an article's locale comes from You don't usually set an article's locale directly. If it belongs to a category, it takes that category's locale. If it doesn't, it falls back to the portal's default locale. Move an article into a category in a different locale, and its own locale moves with it. ## How a reader gets routed This is the detail worth knowing before you assume it works like a browser might. **A visitor who lands on the bare portal URL is redirected to your default locale — not to whatever language their browser is set to.** There's no automatic language detection. If someone should land in French, they need a URL that says so explicitly: a link from your own site, a language switcher, or a locale segment already in the address. In practice this means your default locale isn't just "the first one you happened to add" — it's the one every reader sees unless something routes them elsewhere. ## Plan the root first Write your ten real questions before translating anything — the [parent page](/help-center) makes that call. The reason it matters mechanically: retrofitting a translation structure means going back through articles and categories written independently and manually linking each one to a chosen root after the fact, reconciling whatever drifted between versions in the meantime. Doing it in order — write the root, then translate from it — skips that reconciliation entirely. ## Next Nesting and locale scope. Where an article's own locale is decided. Where allowed locales and the default are actually set. This documentation is built and hosted on [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com), a developer documentation platform.