For Multi-Language Sites is it a Must to Use Sub-Folders for Each Language?

[Boy]

I had 6 (out of ~200) of my articles translated.

My question: is it imperative that I create either a subdomain or subfolder for the 6 articles?

Maybe I'm naive but nothing I'm reading says that something like that is required and is more for organizational benefits. Will it cause any issues on a technical side for https://website.com/english-article1 and https://website.com/french-article1 to be in the same sitemap or anything crazy like that? (EDIT-what a dumb question, lol. Creating a subfolder would put it on the same sitemap...)

I don't see myself translating the entire site or any other articles beyond those 6 (for this language). If I ever get to the point that I would/can do an entire site translation, I'm probably cashin' big enough checks that someone much smarter than me would be paid to clean up whatever micro mess this would cause.

@Philip J. Fry, I saw you answer a similar question recently, hopefully you don't mind helping me out.

 

[Philip J. Fry]

I had 6 (out of ~200) of my articles translated.

My question: is it imperative that I create either a subdomain or subfolder for the 6 articles?

Maybe I'm naive but nothing I'm reading says that something like that is required and is more for organizational benefits. Will it cause any issues on a technical side for https://website.com/english-article1 and https://website.com/french-article1 to be in the same sitemap or anything crazy like that? (EDIT-what a dumb question, lol. Creating a subfolder would put it on the same sitemap...)

I don't see myself translating the entire site or any other articles beyond those 6 (for this language). If I ever get to the point that I would/can do an entire site translation, I'm probably cashin' big enough checks that someone much smarter than me would be paid to clean up whatever micro mess this would cause.

@Philip J. Fry, I saw you answer a similar question recently, hopefully you don't mind helping me out.

If you have 6 articles, it's OK. Make sure you set your language flags for the URL so that Google can understand that it's a different language than the rest of the site.