Why should you translate your WordPress site into multiple languages?

Firstly because it will be a way to develop your visibility on Internet. Indeed by creating a translation from a French page to an English one, you increase your chances that your page will be consulted by an English-speaking Internet user.

This will improve the multilingual referencing of your site and will increase the traffic (number of visitors) on your website in the long term.

For your information, if you don’t know who visits your site you can use « Google analytics ».

On the other hand, the implementation of a translation participates in the improvement of the user experience on your site, since your visitor understands what you write, you avoid having a high bounce rate of your visitors.(Google analytics indicator).

You will have the choice between various WordPress translation extensions, some of which will translate automatically and others which will let you do your own translations. Among the more complex things to translate for a computer or algorithm, It is important to note that there are :

• wordplay
• technical jargon
• cultural informations related to each country.

WPML

WPML is available in several languages (it supports 40 different languages.) Its only disadvantage is that it is not free and here are the prices:

• 39 dollars for one site over one year.
• 99 dollars for 3 sites over a year.
• 199 for multiple sites (agency oriented pack).

It translates WordPress posts, pages, tags and menus. From a technical point of view WPML creates a page for each language translation, which is interesting for the SEO of your site.

On the other hand, as I installed it on one of my sites, I can confirm that the after-sales service is efficient and reactive. In this way, you can call for support if you have problems with the translation plugin for your project.

WPML also allows you to use an automatic translation machine if you want to translate certain articles immediately (this system works with (paid) credits per word to translate). Other advantages include: the continuous enrichment of its features, the compatibility of WPML with a large number of WordPress themes. As well as excellent performance thanks to the new translation engine.

Polylang

Polylang is a free WordPress translation plugin.

It is compatible with all major WordPress plugins and themes.

There is no customer support for the free version.

Here are the prices of the paid versions:

• a 99 euro website
• Three web sites for 198 euros
• 5 sites for 297 euros
• 25 sites for 495 euros

It is one of the most popular translation plugins on Worpdress with no less than 400,000 sites using it.

From a practical point of view it also has the advantage of having an easy to use interface.

Weglot

Weglot is a plugin for automatic translation of content generated via WordPress.

It has the advantage of supporting the translation of over 60 languages. This is a paid plugin, here are the prices:

• The starter pack at 99 euros per year for 10,000 words and 1 language translated
• The business pack at 190 euros per year for 50,000 words and 3 languages translated.
• The Pro pack at 490 euros per year for 200,000 words and 5 languages translated
• the Advanced package at 1990 euros per year for 1,000,000 and 10 languages translated
• The Enterprise pack from 4990 euros where you define the number of languages and words translated.

One of the advantages of Weglot is that it offers you the services of professional translators. Weglot has also designed a content for importing and exporting features in XLIFF or CSV format.In order to facilitate translation processing for agencies.

On the other hand, it is also possible to manually manage the translation of content via an API (no need to go through the WordPress backoffice)

If you’re not very tech-savvy or if « geekery » isn’t your thing, don’t worry, the installation process is very simple. You also have a visual editor to modify your translations (no need to fiddle with the code).

Weglot automatically detects the content to be translated: articles, pages, menus, e-commerce items, widgets, it also allows the translation of metadata, which will be very useful and necessary for a good referencing of your site.

It also has a good level of compatibility with themes and WordPress.

From a design point of view, you can customize the Weglot translation buttons (country flags icon) to better integrate with your existing design. And finally, it includes the translation of woocommerce.

Ajax Translator révolution

It is a free plugin for automatic translation of WordPress content into 60 languages.

Transposh

This plugin manages 82 languages and it’s free, it will allow you to make automatic translations of your articles and it will leave you the possibility to modify manually the translations that you want to modify.

GTranslate

Gtranslate is an automatic translation WordPress extension, this plugin is based on Google translate technology. You have 103 languages available with this extension. You have the possibility to correct the Google machine translation if some translations do not suit you.

Multilingual Press

Multilingual Press is a free plugin for multisite management: this means that « one site » is equivalent to « one language ».

The paid version is multilingual Press Pro, which is available for $99 (to access support and plugin updates)

Mutilingual Press works with machine translation and supports 174 languages.

By its nature (multisite), it has the advantage of improving the speed of each instance, as each installation only needs to load one language.

Google Website translator

Plugin based on Google translate technology.

QtranslateX :

This is a free translation plugin that is known for its ease of use. It offers you a choice of 17 languages.

Loco Translate

It allows you to translate other WordPress plugins. It is not a text translator but more a tool to facilitate the understanding of your extensions/plugins installed on your backoffice.

Google language translator

Lightweight translation plugin

TranslatePress

This is a freemium (free) translation plugin whose interface is based on WordPress.

TranslatePress offers a professional plan from 79 euros.

Its main advantage is to offer you a Translation directly from the Front-end of the theme.

WP Multilang

It is a free translation plugin that is available in several languages. It allows the translation of items and menus

However, with this plugin you must be careful not to work on two articles at the same time, because you may risk to translate your text into the same language (the two articles you have opened simultaneously.)

Linguise

Linguise is also a translation plugin for your WordPress site.

It has the advantage of being affordable, compatible with themes and plugins, easy to use and an alternative to Weglot (because it looks like it.)

Like Weglot it offers a translation via an API which has no impact on the speed of the site.

Linguise’s machine translations are accurate and it supports international SEO with the translation of metadata, URLs and alternative links for different languages.

Linguise is recommended by e-commerce sites because it does not interfere with the database.

Linguise is cheaper than Weglot.

Regarding the disadvantages: it can become expensive compared to other plugins and as there are more languages, you can quickly reach the word limit.

On the other hand, if you cancel the subscription you do not keep your translated content. Here are the different Linguise offers:

• Beginner Plan starting at $15 per month
• Pro at $30 per month
• Large at $70 per month.

Conclusion

WPML is in my opinion, the best translation plugin for wordpress.

Weglot seems to be a good machine translation plugin.

A word of warning about free and automatic translation plugins. If they don’t offer you the possibility to modify their translations and if they work on the principle of direct translation of your text into the user’s language, then this will not be optimal in terms of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Indeed, as there is no real page of the language, Google can not do its job of referencing the page in the language indicated because it is proposed dynamically and therefore it does not exist.

Vous avez donc tout intérêt à utiliser un plugin de traduction tel que WPML ou Weglot.