--- title: "Spanish website translation: tú, usted and hreflang" description: "Translate a website into Spanish: tú or usted, Spain or Latin America, the hreflang values that work, and how LangRelay sets the register for each language." url: "https://www.langrelay.com/guides/spanish-website-translation" --- 1. [Home](https://www.langrelay.com/) 2. [Guides](https://www.langrelay.com/guides) 3. Spanish website translation: tú, usted and hreflang Language guideHow-to # Spanish website translation: tú, usted and hreflang Translate a website into Spanish: tú or usted, Spain or Latin America, the hreflang values that work, and how LangRelay sets the register for each language. [Chris Jayden](https://www.langrelay.com/about) Founder Published 7 October 2026 Reading time 5 min read ![Neighbours share dinner at a long table in a white village plaza at sunset, beside a fountain tiled in green and orange leaves.](https://www.langrelay.com/_emdash/api/media/file/01M4ETG4APK51D9NDAASG0GJ93.webp) On this page 1. Which Spanish does es stand for? 2. Why there is no es-419 page 3. Tú or usted 4. A worked example: one cart screen in both registers 5. The hreflang values for a Spanish site 6. Setting up Spanish in LangRelay 7. Checks before your Spanish pages go live ## Spanish at a glance Español Language code es Text direction Left to right Register tú (informal), usted (formal) ### Regional variants and their hreflang values - `es`Spanish for every reader, written as Spain Spanish (ships today) - `es-MX`Spanish (Mexico), on the roadmap - `es-AR`Spanish (Argentina), on the roadmap Before a single page goes into Spanish, settle two questions: which Spanish your pages are written in, and whether they address the reader as tú or usted. The first decides the language tag in your URLs and hreflang. The second decides the grammar of every sentence that speaks to the reader, from a form error to an order email. In LangRelay, Spanish is the tag `es`, served under `/es/`, written as the Spanish of Spain, and its register is a setting you choose per language. ## Which Spanish does `es` stand for? A bare language tag says nothing about the country, so every translation system has to pick a variety for it. LangRelay follows the Unicode CLDR rule that each bare tag has a default content locale, and for `es` that locale is Spain. So when you add Spanish to a Site, the machine translation is asked for Spanish as written in Spain, and the page is labelled `es`. In hreflang, `es` means "Spanish speakers anywhere", so your `/es/` pages are the version Google can show to readers in Madrid, Mexico City and Buenos Aires alike. For most sites that is the right first step: one Spanish version that every Spanish reader understands. Regional Spanish versions are part of LangRelay's locale model. A tag such as `es-MX` would be its own Target locale, with its own URL prefix (`/es-mx/`), its own hreflang entry and its own approvals, living beside bare `es`. Only the bare tag is offered today; the regional ones are on the roadmap. ### Why there is no `es-419` page RFC 5646 defines `es-419` as Spanish for Latin America and the Caribbean, using a region code from the UN's list. It is a valid language tag. Google's documentation for localized versions says the opposite about hreflang: only ISO 639-1 language codes and ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 region codes are supported, and it names `es-419` as an example of a code that is not. A page meant for Latin American readers therefore needs either bare `es` or one tag per country, such as `es-MX` and `es-AR`. ## Tú or usted Spanish marks the register in pronouns, possessives and verb endings, so the choice shows up in almost every sentence that speaks to the reader. LangRelay treats it as a brand decision. Its guidance is that tú suits most consumer copy written for Spain, while usted suits public-sector sites, financial services and much copy written for Latin America. Two more differences catch out teams that pick a register and stop there. The plural "you" is vosotros mainly in Spain, while other countries use ustedes whatever the level of formality. And in Argentina, Uruguay, much of Central America and several other regions, the everyday informal pronoun is vos rather than tú. LangRelay's register setting offers formal (usted) and informal (tú). It has no vos option, so a site written in Argentine voseo needs a person to edit the copy. ### A worked example: one cart screen in both registers This is an invented example, a short cart page translated twice from the same English source, once with the register set to Informal and once to Formal. | English source | Informal (tú) | Formal (usted) | | --- | --- | --- | | Your cart is empty | Tu carrito está vacío | Su carrito está vacío | | Sign in to see your orders | Inicia sesión para ver tus pedidos | Inicie sesión para ver sus pedidos | | Questions? Write to us | ¿Tienes dudas? Escríbenos | ¿Tiene dudas? Escríbanos | | Keep shopping | Sigue comprando | Siga comprando | Every row changes, including the two whose English never says "you" or "your", because each one speaks to the shopper. Those are the lines a change of register touches, so settle it before translation starts. Buttons can sidestep it: WooCommerce's own Spanish translation writes "Añadir al carrito" and "Ver carrito", infinitives with no tú or usted in them, and "Seguir comprando" where the table above has Sigue or Siga. The register does not settle vocabulary. "Carrito" is common across the Spanish-speaking world, but many product words differ by country, and a Mexican shopper and a Spanish one may expect different terms for the same item. That is a variant question, answered by the tag and by a reviewer who knows the market. ## The hreflang values for a Spanish site Say your site is in English at `example.com` and you add Spanish. A translated pricing page served by LangRelay's WordPress plugin carries these links in its head, and the English page carries the same three: ``` ``` Google asks for exactly this shape: each language version lists itself and every other version, and links that are not returned are ignored. `x-default` names the page for readers whose language matches none of the versions, which here is the English original. When regional variants arrive, a Mexican version would add a fourth line with `hreflang="es-MX"` pointing at `/es-mx/pricing/`, and bare `es` would stay as the catch-all for every other Spanish reader. The tag is the only identity a Target locale has, so the URL prefix, the hreflang value and `html lang` can never disagree. ## Setting up Spanish in LangRelay Spanish is one of the nine languages a Site can use, as its source or as a Target locale. Once it is added, a person who can configure the Site opens Settings, Languages and picks one of three values for its Formality register: - Language default leaves the register to the translation engine's natural choice for website copy. - Formal asks every new machine translation to address the reader as usted. - Informal asks for tú. Register belongs to how your Site sounds in Spanish, so it never appears in a tag, a URL or hreflang. Changing it affects machine translations started afterwards. Approved Spanish text keeps the usted or tú it was written in until someone selects it in the Translation grid and chooses Machine retranslate; LangRelay never rewrites published pages on its own. When Relay reviews a page, a line in a different register from the rest of that page comes back as a minor finding. On paid plans a per-language glossary sits beside the register: product names to keep as written, and terms that must always get one Spanish rendering. By default a translation goes live as soon as it is ready, and free checks hold a page with untranslated text, the wrong language or a changed price. To approve every page yourself, choose Ask me first. ## Checks before your Spanish pages go live - Questions and exclamations open with ¿ and ¡. Check that short labels and buttons kept them. - Read the error messages, the empty states and the order emails as well as the home page, in the same register. - Spanish labels are often longer than their English source, so look at buttons and menus on a phone. - Set prices, dates and units for the countries you sell to; the website localization guide covers those. - View the source of one translated page and confirm `lang="es"` and the hreflang set above. LangRelay's delivery check reads the same tags after each activation. The multilingual website guide covers the decisions that come before choosing a language, and the [hreflang guide](https://www.langrelay.com/guides/hreflang) covers the tags in more depth. French and German raise the same questions with their own answers: see [French website translation](https://www.langrelay.com/guides/french-website-translation) and [German website translation](https://www.langrelay.com/guides/german-website-translation). To see the register setting on your own site, [book a demo](https://www.langrelay.com/book-a-demo). ## Sources The pages this one cites, with the day each was read. 1. 01[WordPress.org translations, WooCommerce (Spanish, Spain)](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/woocommerce/stable/es/default/)translate.wordpress.org, checked 7 October 2026 2. 02[Google Search Central, Tell Google about localized versions of your page](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/specialty/international/localized-versions)developers.google.com, checked 7 October 2026 3. 03[RFC 5646, Tags for Identifying Languages](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5646.html)rfc-editor.org, checked 7 October 2026 4. 04[Wikipedia, Spanish pronouns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_pronouns)en.wikipedia.org, checked 7 October 2026 [Chris Jayden](https://www.langrelay.com/about) Founder, LangRelay Chris Jayden is the founder of LangRelay. Chris has worked on websites of every size, from large e-commerce stores to small sites with a handful of pages, and started LangRelay after years of translating them the hard way. On this page 1. Which Spanish does es stand for? 2. Why there is no es-419 page 3. Tú or usted 4. A worked example: one cart screen in both registers 5. The hreflang values for a Spanish site 6. Setting up Spanish in LangRelay 7. Checks before your Spanish pages go live Share - [Share on LinkedIn (opens in a new tab)](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.langrelay.com%2Fguides%2Fspanish-website-translation) - [Share on X (opens in a new tab)](https://x.com/intent/post?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.langrelay.com%2Fguides%2Fspanish-website-translation&text=Spanish%20website%20translation%3A%20t%C3%BA%2C%20usted%20and%20hreflang) See it on your site A 30-minute walkthrough on one of your pages. [Book a demo](https://www.langrelay.com/book-a-demo) - formality register - hreflang - locales - spanish ## Keep reading - Guide ### [Hreflang: a practical guide with WordPress examples](https://www.langrelay.com/guides/hreflang) What hreflang does, the codes Google accepts, where the tags go, a worked WordPress example with subdirectories, the common mistakes and a checklist. - Glossary ### [Locale](https://www.langrelay.com/glossary/locale) A locale is a language plus the regional conventions that go with it, written as a tag such as de or de-AT. How locales differ from languages and how tags work. Book a demo ## See LangRelay on your own site Book 30 minutes with the team. We translate one of your pages live and walk through review, publishing and multilingual SEO. [Book a demo](https://www.langrelay.com/book-a-demo)[See pricing](https://www.langrelay.com/pricing)