Top 8 Translation Plugins for WordPress
How many languages are supported by your site on WordPress? English only? In this case, you consciously limit the range of you site`s potential audience. To translate the text content of your site you do not need to know all the languages in the world. Plugin creators have taken care of this for you. Today you can install a plugin for automatic translation of almost all existent languages. Isn`t it an amazing opportunity for the exchange of information on a global scale?
Despite the apparent similarity, translation plugins can have different features and can support different number of languages. In addition, there are both free and paid plugins. Free services often provide additional features for a fee. But their basic functionality is free for use.
Let’s see what plugins are better to be used for giving your website a multilingual content. We will analyze the most popular plugins for automatic translation, find out their strengths and weaknesses. You just have to make a choice, which suits your individual needs.
Transposh WordPress Translation
Transposh WordPress Translation provides automatic translation into 92 languages. Translation possibilities go beyond standard text content with this plugin. You can automatically adapt the meta tags title, keywords and description for any of the 92 languages provided.
Transposh provides the ability to add a special widget for the user to select the language on the site. The operating principle is based on translation of certain sections of the site into a language that the user selects.
Installing and configuring the plugin are quite simple and fast. You need to download the archive file, extract it to a directory /wp-content/plugins/, activate the plugin in the admin panel, “Plugins” section. After that you can configure Transposh as you wish. Among the interesting features are different types of widget display for the translation of the site, enabling and disabling the automatic translation, setting the availability of certain languages.
All functions are free to use.
Learn MoreMultilingual Press
Multilingual Press is also a free plugin for automatic translation of a site on WordPress. But it has a large variety of available languages for the user. Multilingual Press is available for 174 languages.
This plugin allows you to create different pages for different languages, and combine them into one site. Installation and configuration of the plugin are similar to the previous participant of our top: download the archive, extract it, activate and customize to fit your needs.
Additional features of Multilingual Press, which are provided with a certain fee: technical support for users, automatically redirect users to pages with specific languages and other advanced settings for plugin`s functionality.
Learn MoreqTranslate
qTranslate supports not so much language as the previous participants of our top – only 17. But this plugin has a useful feature that will be appreciated by many bloggers. qTranslate allows you to automatically translate and edit the posts directly into the admin panel, while witing the content in your native language. Thus you do not need to create separate pages for different languages manually. Checking process for the content in different languages becomes much more simple, as you see all variants of translation on the same page while creating the post.
Certainly, qTranslate serves other purposes than the plugins that will automatically translate text into 90+ languages. It will suit your needs if you want to get high-quality and fast translation for just a few languages.
Learn MoreCeceppa Multilingua
Another free plugin for automatic creation of a multilingual website from the Italian designers – Ceceppa Multilingua. This plugin becomes interesting because of a combination of useful features that other participant of this top have. Ceceppa Multilingua gives the site administrator the possibility to use automatic translation directly on the page, while creating a post. In addition, the plugin creates a separate page with the SEO-friendly URLs for each translated language.
The Ceceppa translator provides a convenient and customizable widget to increase the comfort level of your site`s visitors. Also plugin laid memory function of language used by the user and display the correct language version of the page based on the saved data.
Learn MoreAjax Translator Revolution WordPress Plugin
Ajax Translator Revolution is a paid plugin, which provides an opportunity to work with 91 language. An interesting advantage of the plugin is the ability to translate a variety of elements of the site to create its multilingual version. This means that with Ajax Translator Revolution you can translate not only text content of posts on a blog or website, but sliders, tables, pop ups, calendars, forms, and many other built-in elements of thre site.
This plugin has a lot of opportunities for flexible customization. Its creators claim 87 different settings that can help you create a multilingual website for any purpose and need.
Another useful feature of Ajax Translator Revolution WordPress Plugin is an opportunity to remember the language for the user who has visited the site earlier. This will ensure your visitors comfort and motivates them to return to the site.
Learn More Live PreviewGoogle Language Translator
Google Language Translator is a free and one of the most popular plugins for automatic translation of websites` pages. It provides translation for more than 80 languages. With the help of Google Language Translator you can translate not only the main content of text posts, but other elements of the site structure. For this purpose, a special shortcode is used.
One of the unique advantages of this translation is that it is compatible with your Google account. In particular, you can use your account with Google Analytics to track user activity, select different languages. This information can be useful to get acquainted with your audience.
Functional translation from Google also allows you to exclude certain areas of the site being automatically translated. This may be useful for a certain menu or partitions.
Learn MoreWPGlobus – Multilingual Everything!
WPGlobus is a unique product in the section of automatic translators. It is an aggregator of various plugins, widgets, and extensions for WordPress, created by different developers. Associations of different plugins in one collection makes it truly universal.
For the site administrator WPGlobus is convenient by the opportunity to enable or disable various functions without the need for additional file downloads, extracting archives and other elements of the standard installation of multilingual plugins. You set all at once, and then connect the desired functions as necessary.
Learn MoreLingoTek Translation
LingoTek Translation is more than an automatic translator for your site. Of course, automatic page translation function is enabled in the plugin. Moreover, it can be used to automatically translate the meta tags and other elements of your website or blog.
Additional features of LingoTek are created for manual translation of a whole team of translators and qualified opportunity to order a manual translations from the plugin functionality. Thus, LingoTek plugin users have a choice between automatical and two kinds of manual translation. For growing projects, this approach may be optimal. First you use a free automatic translation, then the service of professional interpreters through plugin functionality, and at the last stage – pick your own team of translators and provide them with a comfortable environment for teamwork.
Learn MoreFinal words
Selecting a plugin for automatic translation of the site should be based on the goals that you set for the site. In addition, an important step will be the analysis of your target audience.
You can experiment with different plugins to create a multilingual site. Installing and configuring the plugins of this category does not take much time and does not require deep knowledge and rich experience in the field of site administration.
Do not hope for a perfect translation into all languages of the world. Automatic translation of any plugin has not yet been able to ensure 100% quality and can not compete with manual translation. Nevertheless, the initial savings can be actual if you have just started learning your target audience and do not know on what language should you focus. After tracking through the pages of certain language and activities of visitors of your site you will be able to improve the quality of the translation with the help of qualified specialists for specific pages. This will allow you to save significant budget for the translation of content.
Experiment and strive for the multilingual site!
Thanks for this great list! I am curious about something though. I know a lot of sites benefit from these kinds of plugins but what if your blog is centered around one area, namely the US… Is a translation plugin needed/would it help? I know we have a lot of Spanish speakers here so I have been considering it.