Adding Thai to your website: what to get right before you translate

Many English-led businesses in Thailand reach a point where their best new customers are Thai. Adding a Thai version of the website is the obvious step, and it is easy to do badly. A Thai reader can tell within a sentence whether a page was written for them or run through a translation tool. Here is what to get right first.

1. Decide who the Thai version is for

Thai residents booking a weekend away, Thai companies hiring an adviser and Thai patients choosing a clinic all read differently. Write down who the Thai pages serve and what they need to do, then decide which pages to translate. Often it is not all of them, at first.

2. Give Thai its own URLs

Put the Thai pages at their own addresses, for example /th/, rather than swapping text with JavaScript at the same URL. Then:

• Set lang="th" on each Thai page
• Add hreflang annotations linking each English page to its Thai equivalent, and back
• Give each Thai page its own self-referencing canonical
• Translate the title, meta description, image alt text and structured data, not just the body

Do not redirect visitors by location. Many people in Thailand prefer English, many Thai speakers live abroad, and search engines may never see pages they are redirected away from. Offer a clear language switch instead.

3. Treat Thai typography as its own discipline

Thai looks wrong very quickly when it is set with styles built for English.

• Choose a real Thai typeface. Most Latin fonts have no Thai characters, so the browser falls back to whatever the device has. Pick a Thai face that pairs with your brand font, such as one of the Noto, IBM Plex Sans Thai or Sarabun families.
• Looped or loopless. Traditional looped letterforms read well in body text and feel formal; modern loopless forms feel contemporary and suit headings. Many sites use both.
• Line height. Thai vowels and tone marks stack above and below the letters. Line heights that suit English will clip them. Allow more, often around 1.6 to 1.8.
• Line breaks. Thai is written without spaces between words. Modern browsers break lines between words using built-in dictionaries, but CSS such as word-break: break-all breaks words in half. Test headings and buttons at every width.
• No fake bold or italic. If your Thai font has only one weight, the browser will fake the others. Load the weights you use.

4. Localise the details

• Dates. Thai readers often expect the Buddhist Era: 2026 is 2569. Use it where your audience expects it, consistently.
• Prices. Show baht clearly (฿ or บาท) and be consistent with VAT-inclusive or exclusive prices.
• Contact. Put your LINE Official Account where Thai readers will look for it, with hours and an automatic reply.
• Maps. Make sure your Google Business Profile has a Thai name and address that matches the site.

5. Use a professional translator, then check it in place

A good Thai translator adapts tone, not just words, and will tell you when an English phrase has no natural Thai equivalent. Give them the context: who the page is for and what it should make them do. Then review the result on real phones, because line breaks and button labels behave differently in Thai.

6. Plan for upkeep

The most common failure is not a bad translation but a stale one. When the English price list changes and the Thai one does not, Thai customers see the wrong price. Link each page to its translation in your editing workflow, and make it obvious when one language falls behind.

More on building for Thailand and on local-market websites. Planning a Thai version? Tell us about your business and we will help you scope it.