Most bilingual sites in Laos are built in English and then "translated". The result is familiar: Lao text squeezed into boxes designed for Latin letters, diacritics clipped at the top of buttons, and sentences that break in the middle of words. Building properly bilingual from the first sketch avoids all of it.
Typography
- Choose a real Lao typeface. Pair your Latin fonts with a well-drawn Lao family such as Noto Sans Lao or Noto Serif Lao, and let the Lao font lead when the page is in Lao.
- Give it room. Lao stacks vowels and tone marks above and below the line. Increase line height (around 1.7 to 1.8 for body text) and never set negative letter-spacing on Lao headings.
- Don't fake italics. Lao has no italic tradition; use weight or colour for emphasis instead.
Line breaking
Lao is written without spaces between words, so browsers rely on dictionary-based line breaking. Modern browsers handle this well, but it breaks when text is forced onto one line, split into letter-by-letter animations, or truncated by character count. Set the lang="lo" attribute correctly so the browser knows which rules to apply, and test on real devices.
Content
- Write Lao copy with, not after, the English. Headlines that work in one language often need a different idea in the other.
- Give each language its own URL so both can be found in search, and link them with
hreflang. - Keep numbers, dates and currencies consistent: decide on Lao or Arabic numerals and stick to it.
Forms and data
Make sure forms, databases and email systems store Unicode correctly, that search works on Lao words, and that validation messages exist in both languages. A form that rejects a Lao name is a small failure that visitors remember.
This website follows these rules. Every page exists in English and Lao, with other regional languages alongside. See how we can help.