How to create a Multilingual WordPress Site: A beginners guide
If you want to reach a global audience then, you must make your website translation ready. The internet is not only limited to one country; people all around the world use it. Your website is accessible to everyone on the internet. Because of this accessibility, many businesses have taken the opportunity to go global. You can also do the same and create a multilingual WordPress site. It’s up to you to take advantage of the exposure and make your site stand out. Just keep reading until the end to learn how!
What’s the use of plugins in making a multilingual WordPress site?
Unfortunately, there are no default WordPress features to make a multilingual WordPress site. Although, you can install WordPress with your native language. To create your WordPress multilingual site, you need the help of a WordPress multilingual translation plugin. Your visitors may be from different countries, and they may have different cultural differences. When they are browsing your site, you should give them the ability to translate the language to the one they use or understand. What it does is that it makes your website more engaging and approachable for any visitor who lands on your site.
Generally, you can translate your WordPress site in two ways. You can either use translation plugins or multilingual plugins. Translation plugins use online translation services while multilingual plugins allow you to add multilingual content and translate your site. Multilingual WordPress site plugins translate better with human translations. It may seem like a hassle to translate your content yourself or hire translators. But, human translations are better as some content need translations through which the writers can clearly reflect their ideas, perceptions, and vision. On the other hand, translation plugins generate machine translated content which is not always accurate.
Therefore, multilingual plugins are more efficient and reliable when you want to make a multilingual WordPress site. The helpful features and interface make it possible for you to translate any page or post with ease. So, it’s best to choose a multilingual plugin for your site because you can get human translations. It’s very easy to install one, and you can translate your site in a few steps.
We have listed three best multilingual plugins. And, you can learn how to make your site multilingual if you follow the simple instructions below.
Best WordPress multilingual site plugins
1. WPML
WPML is the best premium multilingual WordPress site plugin. Currently, it has three premium plans: Multilingual Blog, Multilingual CMS and Multilingual Agency which costs $29, $79 and $159 respectively. It offers over 40 languages and you can also add your own language variants using languages editor. Generally, you can translate posts, pages, custom post types, categories, taxonomies, and tags. With this premium plugin, you can even translate WordPress menus, themes, and plugins.
It has powerful translation management. You can turn your users to translators and assign specific translation jobs. On the other hand, you can connect with a third party translation service of your choice. The process is also made easy as you can send content directly from WPML’s translation dashboard. Not only this but, WPML works well most of the best WordPress themes. If you want the detailed tutorial on this plugin, click on How to Make WordPress Site Multilingual using WPML: Beginner’s Guide.
Key Features:
- Multilingual E-Commerce support
- Translate Themes and plugins
- Multi-user translation management
2. TranslatePress
TranslatePress is the multilingual WordPress site plugin that has the simplest interface; so simple that anyone can use it without any trouble. It has a great user-friendly interface for translating the contents of a site. It gives a live preview of your site while you are translating the contents of your site. This free plugin is integrated with Google Translate which allows you to set up automatic translation using your own Google API key.
You can also place language switchers anywhere in your site by inserting shortcodes. In the same way, you can place the language switcher as a WordPress menu item or as a floating dropdown. You can also allow publishing language translations only when it is completed using the editorial control. TranslatePress has a range of premium add-ons that allows you to extend the features even more.
Key Features:
- Translation displayed in real-time
- Support both manual and automatic translation
- Integrated with Google Translate
3. Polylang
Polylang is the best free Multilingual plugin that allows you to create a bilingual or multilingual WordPress site. This plugin makes it easy for you to add posts in a different language and add translations for posts in the default language. You can add content using any and, as many languages as you want. Moreover, you can translate custom posts which is great for WooCommerce websites. You can even translate your site title and tagline to as many languages as you like.
Translate your site by giving your own style and ideas rather than putting up machine translated content. Machine generated translation is a great help but, they take the life out of your beautiful site. Another great feature of this plugin is that it is fully integrated with Lingotek Translation. It is a complete translation management system which provides services like translation memory or semi-automated translation.
Key Features:
- Use multiple languages and RTL support
- Browser language detection option
- Lingotek integration
How to create your multilingual WordPress site? (Using Polylang)
Firstly, you must download and install the Polylang plugin. Once you activate it, you’ll see the Languages tab below Settings in the navigation menu. Click on it.
Then, you can add any number of languages you want for your multilingual WordPress site.
Now, Click on the Strings translations and you’ll see all the strings of your site there like site title, tagline etc. Click on the black fields and translate the strings to the selected languages.
After that, go to the Settings tab, you can modify the URL for multilingual content. You can also activate the Detect browser language setting. This allows the website to change the language to the visitors’ preferred language used in the browser.
Translate Posts and Categories
To add multilingual content or to translate old post you need to go to the post editor. First, select the default language and type in the post content. You can see the flags of the languages you added earlier and the plus signs beside them.
Now, click on the plus sign to type in the translations of the default post.
In fact, you can translate any custom post with this plugin. This makes it possible to translate any product post of WooCommerce website.
Furthermore, you can also translate all the tags and categories used for your blogs. Just go to Posts>>Categories and click on the plus icons to translate them one by one.
Displaying the language selector widget
With this plugin, you can allow your visitors to select the language in which they want to read your post. Click on Appearance>>Widgets. You can see the Language Switcher widget there. Then, drag and drop the widget to the widget area. On the checkboxes, check the Displays language names option
Now, you can preview any of blog post to see how the Language selector works for your visitors.
Concluding:
Therefore, it is very essential to add more languages to your site. You are at a loss if you think only using English is enough to go global in this digital world. To grow your business and make your brand out there you need to have a multilingual WordPress site. You can reach a large variety of audience by making a multilingual site in WordPress. You can also choose to get automated translation services to translate your site.
But, human translation makes your site more reliable and reading friendly for your readers. And using a plugin for this purpose make your work much easier. Just choose the best multilingual plugin for your site and, you’re a step ahead towards reaching a larger audience for your site.
Likewise, if you want more tutorials for upgrading your WordPress site, check these out!
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