One Work, Two Languages

Start with the work, not the row

A bilingual article is one intellectual work with two complete presentations. The pages share an identity, but neither should become a bag of half-localized fields.

Field	Shared or localized	Purpose
Slug	Shared	Stable identity across locales
Language	Per page	Language of this body
Origin Language	Shared	Language used by the author
Title and Summary	Localized	Reader-facing metadata
Status	Per page	Independent publication control
Other Version	Relation	Connects the complete pages

The public lookup can stay deliberately strict:

type Locale = 'en' | 'zh'

async function findPublishedArticle(locale: Locale, slug: string) {
  return repository.find({
    language: locale,
    slug,
    status: 'Published',
  })
}

The relation helps the interface offer another language, but it must never redefine the requested page.

Editorial sequence

• Write the origin page.
• Create the second page with the same slug.
• Set the same Origin Language on both pages.
• Add reciprocal relations.
• Review title, summary, and links in each language.
• Publish each page independently.

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Adding a future Japanese version should create a third complete locale page, not another cluster of language-specific columns squeezed into an existing row.