Helpful WordPress plugins for multilingual websites
Thanks to its convenience, stability, and scalability, an entire industry has grown around WordPress and its plugins for multilingual websites.
WordPress is free and open-source software, first released in 2003, currently powering more than 27% of websites worldwide.
One of the essential WordPress design features is the use of plugins:
- enabling users to enhance and adapt functionality,
- and tailoring it to their website or blog.
Here we focus on plugins for creating multilingual websites so that your company communicates with new target audiences in their language.
→ There are dozens of options available, so we’ve selected our top three.
WPML
We begin the analysis of the WordPress plugins for multilingual websites with this plugin, which provides robust, advanced features and technical support in multiple languages.
These features make WPML one of the most popular multilingual plugins around.
Its functionality lets you translate content yourself or via a professional translation service provider.
You can translate each content item (pages, posts, menus, headers, etc.) in the interface, linking quickly to in-situ visualization so you can view translations within the context of the page itself (always a good idea!).
Alternatively, you can export content to XLIFF and send it to professional linguists for translation before being imported back into the system. WPML also offers a high level of compatibility with other significant plugins.
For instance: SEO and e-commerce, meaning that the different features of your multilingual website fit seamlessly together.
qTranslate X
This plugin is a rebooted version of qTranslate, a long-time tried and tested multilingual plugin, and is a simple, convenient solution for content localization.
It delivers this simplicity in a way the plugin adds additional tabs to the WordPress editor to make working with multiple languages as simple as working with one.
Furthermore, the Language Switcher feature allows users to choose the language version they want to view regardless of what page they are on and is especially useful for dynamic content.
qTranslate X offers free machine translation and supports professional translation by humans, like the native translators’ team at SIGNEWORDS.
The developers don’t require you to pay a subscription or installation fee, but they request that you make an affordable donation so that they can maintain and provide support to their users.
Visit their donations page for more details.
Polylang
Another popular WordPress multilingual plugin, Polylang, rates highly among its user base as a way of simultaneously managing content on their websites across numerous languages.
Polylang enables you to use unique domains or subdomains per language and automatically copy categories and tags during translation.
It supports RTL scripts and facilitates content translation in universal languages.
This WordPress plugin is also available as a premium version, Polylang Pro, which includes a premium support service and additional features, such as:
- post duplication across languages,
- the option to enable or disable languages,
- as well as further integration with other plugins.
WordPress plugins for multilingual websites analysis
These three plugins are all excellent solutions for multilingual website content translation.
But we’d also like to sound a note of caution at this point as some others exist solely as a means of integrating automatic machine translation into website creation.
Its benefits relate to speed (as it generates translated content instantly) and costs (because generally, there aren’t any!).
However, as is always the case with machine translation:
- there is a high risk of inadequate quality translation that search engines may consider to be spam,
- and we’re sure that that’s not the type of content you’d like appearing on your website,
- so be sure to have a translation company like SIGNEWORDS at your site to make sure everything is ok!
WPML, qTranslate X, and Polylang are among the most popular plugins on WordPress for website translation and multilingual content creation.
We’ve selected them here as they all integrate well into a broader translation workflow, whether you opt to do the translation yourself or partner with a language service provider like SIGNEWORDS.
Identifying the right price and functionality combination will depend on your current situation.
🌎 At SIGNEWORDS, we integrate language consultancy and translation services in all languages. To check all our services and ask for a free quote, contact us HERE ツ