If conquering the global market is your goal, having a multilingual site should be on top of your to-do list. Thankfully, building a multilingual WordPress site is not that hard. A WordPress translation plugin will help you to do it easily.
A translation plugin is a tool that helps to localize your website into other languages. It can help you to translate everything on your WordPress site – your content, menus, widgets, etc.
What To Look Out For?
Each WordPress translation plugin has their own unique features. Thus, take a closer look at your need first.
This step will make you focused on what to look for in a WordPress translation plugin.
- You need to choose which translation methods suit you best. Some translation plugins require human translation, while others rely on automatic translation.
Some plugins like Weglot combine these two methods to produce more accurate and reliable results. - Consider their additional features and pricing plans. Some plugins may support SEO friendly translation from the get-go, while others require an upgrade to pro version to use this feature.
Pro Tip: Before picking up a translation plugin, make sure your WordPress theme is translation ready. You can find such information in theme description or documentation.
Let’s check out the best WordPress translation plugins.
The 5 Best WordPress Translation Plugins
1. Weglot Translate
Weglot is one of the best tools to start a multilingual site. This plugin is used in over 20 thousand websites. The 5-star rating speaks for itself.
Weglot tops our list for its user-friendly interface and handy features. There are 60+ language choices available in the free version.
Yet, the free version allows you to choose only one target language. Extra target languages are available only in its paid plans.
After activating it, Weglot’s machine translation will do the hard work. It will translate every word on your site into your chosen language.
You can check the translation manually using In Context Editor button to get the most accurate result.
The best thing is that Weglot also generates SEO friendly URL structure. This will make sure your site is searchable in the other target languages.
Other key features from its free version are:
- Fully compatible with most WordPress themes and plugins
- Intuitive dashboard to manage your language and translation process
- Real-time translation
- Customizable language switch button
Additional features you can get from Weglot’s paid plan:
- Using Weglot on more than one websites
- Unlimited language choices
- Translation up to 5,000,000 words
- Access translator experts to get a human translation or improve machine translation result
- Import translation from WPML or Polylang plugins
Pricing: Translating up to 2000 words into one language – free. Paid plans start at $9.38.
2. GTranslate
GTranslate uses Google automatic translation service. The plugin has a 4.8 rating and more than 100k active installs.
This plugin lets users choose their preferred languages from the drop-down widget. It has over a hundred language choices which will allow you to reach up to 99% internet users. Luckily, all target languages are available for free.
More features from GTranslate free version:
- Mouse over effect
- Dropdown widgets’ styling
- Alternative flags for some countries
- Language bar with flags in the menu
- Compatible with WooCommerce
GTranslate free version is already rich in features. However, it has some limitations. Upgrading GTranslate to the paid version is a wise investment to unleash its full power.
Some GTranslate premium features are:
- Neural translation. A machine translation that feels human-like
- Editing the translation result
- SEO friendly URL in the targeted languages
- Meta keywords and descriptions translations
- Google Analytics integration
- Language hosting. You can host the targeted language in the local top domain so your site has a bigger chance to rank higher in local search engine results
Pricing: Free. Paid version starts at $14.99/month
3. Polylang
Being the most popular WordPress translation plugin with 400.000+ active installation, Polylang deserves a place in our list.
Polylang offers extensive language choices. You can choose from over 100 target languages.
Polylang translations need to be done manually. However, you can integrate Polylang with Lingotek service and get help from professional translators.
Since Polylang requires human translation, you can take control of what content you want to be translated. Even more, you can also translate the system functions and text by accessing Languages -> Strings.
You can try Polylang basic features for free. Yet, buying its premium version for $99 gives you more functionality such as slug translation and premium support.
4. TranslatePress
Nothing beats TranslatePress for its modern translating experience. It offers interface similar to WordPress customizer. All you need to do is mark which text you want to translate.
While you’re translating text, TranslatePress will take care of the back end. This plugin will make sure your translation is SEO friendly.
If you think the manual translation is too time-consuming, TranslatePress also allows you to have automatic translation. Integrated with Google Translation API, Translate Press gives you a high-quality machine translation results. You can also edit the results by yourself to improve your translations.
Its free version is already great. Yet, upgrading TranslatePress to the paid version will unlock its power such as:
- SEO Pack Addon: Translate slugs, meta description, image alt text, etc.
- Customizable language switcher
- Translator account add-ons: Enable users to translate the site without admin’s permission
- Navigation based on language option: Set different menu options for different languages
- Automatic user language detection
5. Google Language Translator
Google Language Translators automatically translates your site with the help of Google Translate API. The process is really simple.
After activating the plugin, you just need to choose your original language and the target languages
Then, this plugin will create a Translate button on your widget area. Every time your users want to see your site in their preferred languages, they just need to hit this button.
This plugin is free and doesn’t have the premium version. Here are some extra features from this plugin:
- More than 80 languages to choose
- Show/hide Google logo
- Choose specific languages or all languages available for translation
- Add shortcodes to show translation tool anywhere
Although this plugin is simple, it also has some weaknesses. First, forget about SEO benefits for translating your site. This plugin isn’t SEO friendly.
Second, you can’t edit the translated text. This means that if the automatic translation is inaccurate, you are stuck with it.
Conclusions
Having a well-translated page is important if you want to appeal to international visitors.
Great thing is, that you don’t have to invest a lot of money or time for this task. There are plenty of WordPress translation plugins that can help you with this task.
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