Best WordPress Translation Plugins To Create A Multilingual Website
Best WordPress Translation Plugins
What are translation plugins in WordPress? And what do you do exactly? How can you choose the most appropriate extension for your site?
Since you are here now I think you are looking for the best solution to translate your wordpress site..right?
In WordPress, you can always create a website using almost any language, but the multilingual website feature is not available by default in WordPress.
So if you want to create a multilingual website (display website content in two or more languages) then you are in the right place.
Of course, there are many benefits that accrue to you as a multilingual website owner.
One of the most prominent of these benefits is the ease of access to new markets or attracting visitors to your site from a different country and nationality.
In order to achieve this, you will need to choose between a selection of translation WordPress plugins.
Don’t worry.. In this article, you will learn about 7 of the best WordPress translation plugins, whether you want automatic, manual or professional translation, free or paid.
One of these plugins will definitely help you display the content of your WordPress site in several different languages.
Now let’s delve into the details of each of them…
Best WordPress Translation Plugins
There are many plugins that help you translate your WordPress site, including those that provide you with automatic translation and others that help you translate your site manually.
Some of these add-ons also have a professional translation feature by specialists, a feature that is only available in paid versions, or for an additional fee.
There are also add-ons that help you translate the texts and visible parts of your site to visitors, and other add-ons to help you translate all parts of your site, including the template and plugins.
Now, let’s take a closer look at the best WordPress plugins for translation and creating a multilingual website.
WeGlot -1
I can tell you that I really like this great plugin from Weglot.. it is a great plugin that gives you a great deal of flexibility in translating your WordPress site.
Weglot gives you three easy ways to translate your site, depending on your budget and the accuracy of the translation you want.
- Machine translation – which is the easiest and fastest way, but since it is machine translation, you cannot trust 100% that it is accurate.
- Manual translation – where you translate your site manually using a visual editor, is a good method if you know the language, but it is time consuming.
- Professional translation – where you use the services of a professional at Weglot to translate your content and automatically add it to your site, and this method costs you more money, but it is accurate and time-saving.
The extension is easy to use and all translations you get are optimized for search engines.
In terms of ease of use, Weglot is the best translation add-on on this list.
Disadvantages of adding Weglot
- The paid version of the add-on is on a monthly basis, not all at once.
- You have to use the cloud user interface to do the translation, some may not like to leave the WordPress dashboard.
- Free up to 2000 words.
- After that, paid plans start from €99 per year.
WPML-2
WPML is one of the most popular translation plugins for WordPress, has been around since 2009 and is a popular and reliable plugin.
Like any premium translation plugin, it translates all parts of your WordPress site, including custom post types, categories, menus, text, template… just about everything.
If you don’t want to translate your site’s content manually, WPML also provides professional translation services, then easily add the translated content from those services to your site.
You can also add new users in your WordPress site and assign them the role of “Translator”, after which these users can only do translation tasks.
The WPML extension also integrates with e-commerce solutions to create a multilingual online store.
Disadvantages of WPML plugin
- There is no free version of the add-on.
- Does not include a solution for machine translation.
WPML plugin price
- Multilingual blog post = $39 per year.
- Multilingual CMS version = $99 per year.
- Multilingual agency issuance = $199 per year.
Polylang -3
Polylang is a free and popular WordPress translation plugin.
A light and easy-to-use add-on, despite the lack of features compared to previous add-ons.
Polylang enables you to add a “change language button” on your site, as well as a text editor within WordPress.
With Polylang you can create different versions of your site’s posts or pages, and customize each version to appear in a specific language.
You can also translate all the public parts of your site through the Polylang user interface such as site address, date format, and other options to display about your site to visitors.
A very good addition, but…
Disadvantages of adding Polylang
With the free Polylang plugin you can only translate your site manually.
If you want to add a professional or machine translation, you will have to install Lingotek as well as an add-on for Polylang.
With Lingotec you will be able to easily manage and sync professional automatic translations with Polylang.
It’s not the perfect solution for translating your site, but it does the job and gets the job done.
Polylang is a great option because it’s a free add-on, only if you’re going to be doing the manual translation.
But in terms of the user interface, I think another plugin like Weglot is easier to use.
Polylang add price
- Free
GTranslate -4
If you are looking for an easy-to-use and functional translation add-on, you can use GTranslate.
I’ve been using this plugin on my personal blog for about a year, and I love how clear and simple it is.
GTranslate uses Google Translate to automatically translate your site into 103 different languages.
It translates everything from posts, pages, categories and tags to menus, widgets, templates and plugins.
It also supports the WooCommerce extension to create a multilingual online store.
Visitors can also change the language of your website pages by adding a Change Language button.
There are 10 different widget designs that allow you to display the languages available on your site using a drop down menu, flags, scripts, etc…
The Change Language button can be easily added to the sidebar, and you can integrate it into your site using a PHP command or copy and paste the HTML and CSS code.
Everything in GTranslate is done from one central settings page, where you can select your default language, activate analytics, decide what the language change button looks like and where to display, and enable automatic switching to the visitor’s browser language.
If you have upgraded to the paid version of GTranslate Pro , you can adjust the sub-directory configuration and sub-domain URL structure settings.
The paid version of the extension allows you to archive pages translated by search engines and also allows you to translate your site pages manually.
GTranslate is one of the best translation plugins for WordPress in recent times, and it is very easy to use.
GTranslate add-on price
- There is a free version.
Paid packages:
- CUSTOM Package – $9.99/month (supports translation into one language)
- STARTUP Package – $19.99 per month (supports translation for all languages)
- BUSINESS Package – $29.99 per month (supports translation of page URLs)
- ENTERPRISE Package – $39.99 per month (supports use of country-specific domain name extensions for translated pages)
If you like the results provided by Google’s machine translation service and want to apply them to your site, GTranslate is a great and incredibly easy to use solution.
TranslatePress -5
TranslatePress is a newer WordPress translation plugin that sort of combines the features of Weglot and WPML.
Like Weglot, it supports:
- Manual translation
- Machine translation via Google Translate API
TranslatePress does a great job of helping you translate all parts of your site.
It also gives you an easy-to-use visual user interface that relies on the default WordPress customizer.
Easily open the Visual User Interface and you can then either:
- Click on text strings or blocks of content in the live preview and edit them directly.
- Use the (Next / Previous) buttons to move neatly through all parts of the page to be translated.
- Find and translate text strings directly.
This interface also allows you to translate metadata, such as meta descriptions in the Yoast SEO plugin.
TranslatePress is completely different from Weglot in that it is completely self-hosted.
This means that your translation is stored in your site’s database, and you do not need to rely on a third party.
You also don’t have to pay an ongoing monthly fee, you just pay once for the add-on.
In general, TranslatePress is a good choice if you want to add:
- Comprehensive as it allows you to translate all the small parts and plugins on your site.
- Easy to use.
- Self-hosted.
- Suitable for SEO (only in paid version)
A free version of the TranslatePress plugin is available with limited capabilities on WordPress.org
But if you want to optimize your site for search engines, or you need to translate more than one language, you will need the paid version of it.
TranslatePress add price
- Limited free version.
- Paid packages with prices starting from 79 euros per year.
MultilingualPress -6
MultilingualPress is a plugin that takes a different approach to translating WordPress sites.
Instead of translating your content within your existing site, MultilingualPress creates separate installations for each language using the WordPress Multisite feature.
Then MultilingualPress gives you a simple user interface to link all these websites.
You can use the MultilingualPress extension to create unlimited links between these sites.
For example, if your main site is in English, MultilingualPress can link it to separate versions in different languages.
Although there are many installs using this method, you don’t actually need to switch between sites to modify the translation.
The MultilingualPress interface allows you to edit all translations from the original post editor itself, which is very convenient for you if your site is large and full of content.
What is the benefit of translating in this way?
Basically, if you need to deactivate the MultilingualPress plugin from your site, the translated content will not disappear as with most other translation plugins.
You will only lose the user interface that makes managing translations easier, but you will not lose the translated versions of your site.
This is also very useful for optimizing your site for search engines, as Google can easily index the full translated version of your site.
You might be asking this question now – “If each localized language has a separate site, what about the template and plugins?”
Don’t worry – MultilingualPress includes the feature of syncing both the template and the plugins across all the localized subsites.
Currently, MultilingualPress supports more than 174 languages.
It might seem complicated if you are a WordPress newbie, but if you already know what to do and how WordPress works, MultilingualPress gives you a great deal of flexibility and power.
MultilingualPress add price
- Free addon with option to pay for premium support.
Google Language Translator -7
At the conclusion of the list of the best WordPress translation plugins comes this plugin that does not have many features like the previous plugins.
Google Language Translator is a very basic and simple plugin that does just one thing.. Add the Google Translator widget to your WordPress site.
If that’s all you need, it’s a great choice because it’s a very lightweight add-on compared to other add-ons.
You can add the translation shortcode to posts or individual pages or make it available generally via a custom widget.
However, your site will not be SEO friendly if you translate this way, and because it is an automatic translation, the translated content may not be accurate.
But if you don’t want to invest a lot of time and money, this is the fastest and easiest way ever to add translation to your site.
Google Language Translator add-on price
- The add-on is free.
Well.. what is the best translation WordPress plugin?
(Of course I haven’t used all of these plugins, but I have some experience with translation plugins in general)
So I can offer you two suggestions from my personal point of view:
Suggestion 1: If you’re not concerned with the cost, I think Weglot is the best option overall.
It gives you a lot of flexibility in translating your site, and you can easily use machine, manual or professional translation.
You can also mix all of these methods as needed.
The extension helps you greatly in optimizing your site for search engines, and the user interface is simple and easy to use.
The only downside is that they charge a monthly fee as long as you use the extension.
TranslatePress is also a good option that gives you many of these benefits, but it is self-hosted and with a one-time fee.
Suggestion 2: If you are concerned about cost and your budget is a bit limited, you should use Polylang .
The extension does everything you need – manually – and it doesn’t cost any money.
Regardless of which translation add-on you choose, be sure to install a powerful SEO plugin so you can take advantage of the new search rankings after adding other languages.
Have you used any of the translation plugins in WordPress before?
What is your favorite addition?
Please share your opinion or questions about these additions in the comments below the article.
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