Foreign Tongue: Translate Your WordPress Website With These Useful Tools and Plugins

WordPress is one of the world’s most popular Content Management Systems. It is used by a wide range of people, from English-speaking journalists to French entrepreneurs, from Japanese-speaking students to Arabic-speaking political activists, and so on. Thus, owing to its support for multiple languages as well as localization and translation standards, WordPress serves a target audience that speaks and interacts in various languages. Furthermore, such translation standards help WordPress developers to code and build themes and plugins to make life easier for the end users of WordPress, no matter what their first language may be! In this article, we take a look at some translation and localization plugins for WordPress, that can help you translate your blog or website into multiple languages.

1. The WordPress Multilingual Plugin

The WordPress Multilingual Plugin, or WPML, is a premium solution that lets you translate your WordPress website into multiple languages. The plugin supports over 40 languages by default, and you can add your own packs and variants using the plugin’s editor.

• Support for special language variants such as Canadian French or Mexican Spanish.
• Enhanced Translation Editor to let you override the default translation mechanism.
• Ability to translate theme and plugin texts.
• Automatically translates visitor comments into the language of your choice prior to publishing them.
• If needed, you can hire professional translation services to complement the plugin.
• Pricing: $29 for Multilingual Blog (unlimited websites); inclusive of support for a year.

2. AJAX Translator Revolution WordPress Plugin

AJAX Translator Revolution is an easily customizable premium translation plugin for WordPress.

• Tabbed admin panels with integrated help features.
• Lets you import or export translation settings.
• Remembers the visitors’ language preferences.
• Also provides HD videos for help and support.
• Pricing: $20 for a Regular License.

3. GTranslate

“Your window to the world” -- if nothing else, this plugin surely has the best tagline in its niche! GTranslate is a cross-platform plugin that comes with its own cloud translation network and is available in both free and premium versions.

• Supports multiple platforms, including WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal and Magento.
• Supports 58 different languages and comes with detailed analytics.
• Premium versions also include SEO features such as search engine indexing and meta data translation.
• Premium versions provide a cloud-based Translation Delivery Network to the users and make use of a centralized translation cache to deliver faster results.
• Pricing: Pro version is available for 79 euros (includes free support and one-time integration); Free version as well as custom pricing for Enterprise usage is also available.

4. SimpleTranslate

SimpleTranslate is a nifty and extremely simple plugin for WordPress users.

• The plugin comes with just a widget that you can place in your sidebar, and enable your visitors to choose the language of their choice using the sidebar widget.
• Pricing: Free

5. Polylang

Unlike other plugins, Polylang is not a machine translation tool. It does not automatically translate your content to and from different languages. Instead, it allows you to publish content in multiple languages.

• You can translate posts, pages, categories, tags, widgets, menu items and even RSS feeds.
• The plugin automatically downloads and updates the WordPress language files.
• There is support for pretty permalinks and a native language switcher widget is also provided.
• The plugin itself is available in 15 languages, but for translation purposes, you can use as many languages as you want.
• Lastly, you can also define the default language for the admin panel. Apart from that, the plugin supports Right-to-Left languages such as Arabic and Urdu as well.
• Pricing: Free

6. GTS Translation Plugin

GTS Translation Plugin combines automatic translation and human post editing (crowdsourcing). Thus, your blog content is first translated by the GTS servers, and then the translated version is post-edited by translators from GTS community (alternatively, you can also use your own translators).

• Claims to increase your traffic by at least 30% within two months.
• Supports over 30 languages.
• Also has good SEO features such as permalinks’ and meta tags’ translation.
• Pricing: Free

7. Transposh WordPress Translation

Transposh WordPress Translation is a translation filter for WordPress that, just like GTS Translation Plugin, combines automatic translation with human translation.

• Support for Right-to-Left languages.
• Drag-and-drop interface.
• Lets you translate virtually all your content, including comments, RSS feeds and meta tags.
• Easy integration with BuddyPress.
• Pricing: Free

8. Google Website Translator

Google Website Translator lets you generate a code snippet for your website which you can then employ to integrate a translation mechanism on your site. It is extremely easy to use and implement, and above all, it is free! You can specify the look and appearance of the translation tool (such as a tab, an inline translation menu or a simple bar), as well as select languages of your choice from a collection of over 60 languages. You simply need to copy-paste the generated code snippet in a text widget on your sidebar, and you’re good to go!

Conclusion

English and other European languages have, by far, established themselves as the primary tongues on the internet. Users and speakers of other languages generally have little choice but to employ browser extensions and plugins to read the published text in their own language. By using such translation tools on your website, you can make life easier for users whose native language is not the same as yours. This can, in turn, lead to new visitors for your website. Do you employ any translation tool on your blog or website? If so, which one? Do share your thoughts with us in the comments below! (dpe)