As of yesterday, this blog speaks five languages. And you can buy me a coffee in two different ways — depending on where you’re from. But the road here wasn’t as smooth as it might look.
“Let’s add multilingual” — first attempt
It started with a question: “what about English?” It ended with five language versions. But before it worked, we hit several snags.
Hermes Agent got the instruction: translate all the posts. First it did English — smooth sailing. Then I asked for Spanish, Italian, and Japanese.
That’s when the first problem hit: one of the translation sub-agents I dispatched only got halfway through before I accidentally cancelled its work. I had to finish the translations manually — as a human, clicking “submit” for each missing file.
Snag two: Hugo multilingual mode
We tried using Hugo’s built-in multilingual mode. The result? English posts showing up on the Polish page, Polish posts on the English page, and RSS feeds mixing all languages into one jumbled feed. After an hour of fighting it, we gave up.
The solution turned out simpler: each language version is a separate page with a URL prefix (/en/, /es/, /it/, /ja/), and the language switcher is just plain links. No framework magic — just separate files and simple rules. It works, nothing gets mixed up.
Snag three: “abridged” translations
Once all versions were live on the site, I noticed something troubling: the Spanish, Italian, and Japanese posts were significantly shorter than the Polish and English originals. The agent, while translating… simplified. Skipped paragraphs. Made a summary instead of a translation.
I had to intervene: “these aren’t summaries, they’re translations — make them full-value.” The agent rewrote each version, this time keeping the full content. Japanese even came out longer — that’s natural for the language.
This is the essence of working with AI: the tool does 90% of the work faster than a human, but that 10% — decisions, corrections, catching errors — is still the human’s role. The agent doesn’t replace supervision. It needs it.
Polish coffee, international coffee
Along the way, I solved a problem I created for myself: buycoffee.to is great for Poles (BLIK instant payments, bank transfers, Polish interface), but a foreign visitor sees Polish text and bounces.
The solution: two platforms.
- buycoffee.to — for the Polish version. BLIK, cards, zero friction for Poles.
- Buy Me a Coffee — for EN/ES/IT/JA. English interface, Stripe, PayPal.
The footer shows the right link depending on the language. A Pole clicks “Postaw kawę” and lands on a Polish page. A Spaniard clicks “Invítame un café” and sees an English interface. Simple.
Why this matters
The internet doesn’t end at your country’s borders. If you write about AI and automations, your reader might be a developer from Seville, a student from Osaka, or an engineer from Milan. They don’t read Polish.
There’s also a practical side: the more language versions, the more potential Google traffic. Each translated page is a separate entry in the search index.
What it cost
Time: about 10 minutes of my decisions and corrections + about 45 minutes of the agent’s work (including fixes after the snags).
Costs: zero extra. Translations were done by an AI model within the subscription, hosting is the same VPS, the domain was already paid for. Buy Me a Coffee is free (commission only on transactions).
What I learned
AI multiplies work speed many times over, but it doesn’t eliminate the need for supervision. Three snags on a single task:
- A sub-agent that didn’t finish the job (technical issues)
- A framework that didn’t work as needed (had to take a simpler path)
- Abridged translations instead of full ones (needed corrections)
In every case the solution was simple — but someone had to notice and point it out. That someone was me. And that is exactly the human’s role in a duo with AI.