Tamil, English or both? Choosing a website language in western Tamil Nadu

Start with who acts on the page

• English only suits a business whose buyers are other businesses, exporters, or customers outside Tamil Nadu.
• Tamil only suits a business whose customers are local and read Tamil more comfortably than English — many shops, clinics and service businesses.
• Both suits a business with both audiences, such as a manufacturer with local dealers and outside buyers, or a school whose parents differ.

Do not guess from your own preference. If you already have a site, Search Console shows the exact words people type to find you, and your WhatsApp enquiries show which language customers write in.

How a bilingual site should be built

• Separate addresses for each language — for example /services and /ta/services — so each version can be found, shared and indexed on its own.
• hreflang tags on both versions, naming each other, so search engines show the right one to the right reader.
• The page language declared (lang="ta-IN" on the Tamil pages), which screen readers and browsers rely on.
• Titles and descriptions translated too, not only the body.
• A visible language switch written in its own script (“தமிழ்”), and no automatic redirect based on location.

A button that swaps the text with JavaScript on one address gives search engines only one language to see. This site is built the first way: the Tamil pages are real pages at /ta.

What machine translation gets wrong

• Register. The respectful form a customer expects can come out as the familiar one, which reads as rude.
• Words people say in English. Customers say “website”, “GST bill” and “job work” in English even when speaking Tamil. A literal Tamil term nobody uses makes the page harder to understand, not easier.
• Product names and specifications get translated when they should be left alone.
• Buttons and menus overflow, because Tamil words are often longer than their English equivalents, and nobody checked the layout.

Use translation software for a first draft if it helps, and have a fluent person rewrite it for the customer, not just correct it.

Design details for Tamil text

Use a typeface designed for Tamil, give the text more line height than English needs, and check every heading and button on a phone at real size. Test the page on a mid-range Android phone, because that is the screen most local customers will use.