Hebrew and English as equals

If you land on a page that does not exist here, you see “Not found” in English or “לא נמצא” in Hebrew. In both languages the words sit at the end of the line, and in English the picture next to them is flipped. A small thing, and we did it on purpose.

This story is about the many small things like it that make a bilingual site feel like one site.

Key points

• Every page exists in English and in Hebrew, built from the same layout and not copied.
• Hebrew has its own fonts, and the layout mirrors when the language changes.
• Each language has its own error page, and each page tells search engines about its twin in the other language.
• A check script reports it when a piece of text exists in one language but not the other.

One page, two directions

We do not keep a Hebrew copy of each page. Each page is built once, and the language decides which words go in and which way the page reads. English reads from left to right. Hebrew reads from right to left, and the whole layout turns around by itself.

Hebrew fonts

On the first day, 26 October, we already did a pass on the look of Hebrew text, because the English fonts do not carry over. We removed the tight letter spacing from Hebrew text. Later, Hebrew got its own fonts, separate from the English ones, and all fonts are served from this site.

Mirrored on purpose

Things that belong where reading begins go to the right in Hebrew and to the left in English. The accessibility menu slides in from the side where reading begins, so it comes from the right in Hebrew. The “Not found” words sit at the end of the line in both languages, and the picture beside them is flipped in English.

Each language also has its own error page, and our web host shows the matching one when an address does not exist.

Words that stay in step

Each page topic has its own file of site text in each language. A small checking program reads both languages and tells us when a piece of text exists in one and is missing in the other, and when a piece of text is not used anywhere. It ran clean on 28 October 2026.

What search engines see

Every page carries a small note that says “this page also exists in Hebrew, here” (search engines call this hreflang). The sitemap lists the twins too. A story that exists in one language only, for example a story we have not translated yet, gets the note for that one language only.

What it takes

We think it asks for a second look at everything. A new page, picture or sentence has to work twice: once reading left to right, once right to left. The page checker we describe in A calm site that is also light also runs on pages in both languages.