Are you bilingual or multilingual? The general rule on LinkedIn is that you may only have one profile; having multiple profiles is a violation of the Terms of Service that could get you booted off the site. However, there is one exception to that rule: the Secondary Language Profile.

As of January 2013, over 64% of LinkedIn members are located outside of the US. Because such a large portion of users are multilingual and interested in connecting with people both inside and outside of English-speaking countries, LinkedIn allows users to set up additional LinkedIn profiles that cater to secondary languages.

LinkedIn supports the following languages:

English | Czech | Danish | Dutch | French| German | Indonesian | Italian | Japanese | Korean | Malay | Norwegian | Polish | Portuguese | Romanian | Russian| Spanish | Swedish| Tagalog | Turkish

Click here for a list of languages supported by LinkedIn mobile applications.

NOTE: You cannot change the default language of your profile once you’ve set it up in a particular language. It’s recommended that you set up a secondary language profile instead.

Creating a Profile in Another Language

To create a profile in another language, go to your Profile page and click the down arrow to the right of your “Edit Profile” button. Select “Create profile in another language”:

Choose your language from the dropdown menu:

You’ll also want to update your Professional Headline. Then click “Create Profile.”

The language you select will determine the default language for your profile display and also the language in which you will receive messages from the LinkedIn Corporation. Content and messages will always be displayed in the language in which they are written. LinkedIn does not translate content or messages for you, so you will need to go through each section and update all necessary fields. Remember to save each section before continuing onto the next.

When a member signs in to LinkedIn and views your profile, they will see it in the language you chose when you set up your account; or, if you have multiple profiles in several languages, viewers will see the one most relevant to them. The viewer has the ability to choose from your language profiles by selecting one from the dropdown menu underneath your profile photo.

All of your language profiles will show up in search engines and have their own URL.

You can also delete a secondary language profile by select the language from this dropdown list. Just select “Delete this profile link” and click Delete.

Let me know if this article was useful to you! Also note that the inspiration for this topic came from a question submitted by one of my readers… so please do contribute your ideas if you have them!

Finally, a Bonus Tip on Secondary Language Profiles has been added to the 7th Edition of How to Write a KILLER LinkedIn Profile… coming soon!