If you already have a website and want to make it multilingual, you might think it’s hard or time consuming – nothing father from the truth. With the right WordPress translation plugins you’ll be able to offer your visitors multilingual high quality content in just about any language you could wish for.
Some of these plugins simply integrate automatic translation services into your website while others allow you to build custom multilingual pages and posts. Let’s look at the two main types of plugins available:
Plugins that allow multilingual content – these plugins allow you to effectively translate your website content page after page, post after post. It’s more time consuming and it could be more expensive especially when dealing with large quantities of text but the end translation will be of a higher quality.
Plugins that integrate online translation services – these translation plugins will use online services to auto-translate your site pages for you. This option is much cheaper and easier to implement but the resulting translations are of a lower quality.
All in all and depending on the type of website you’re running and your target audience, you can go for a solution that integrates both plugins into your website. For example, you can use a multilingual content plugin for your basic pages or your important pages and maintain a high quality translation on those, while for user generated content you can simply integrate an automatic translator for convenience. Your visitors will still appreciate the fact that they can enjoy user generated content in their native language, even if it’s a lower quality translation.
If you’re running a business website, we strongly suggest using a multilingual plugin coupled with professional translators for all of your pages and posts. High quality translations will make your brand more trustworthy and bring you closer to your target audience.
Polylang Plugin
The Polylang plugin is probably the most popular WordPress translation plugins out there today. This plugin allows users to create multilingual content pages and posts in an unlimited number of languages. The plugin also allows users to set their preferred language and Polylang will automatically download all language packs.
Polylang is also compatible with most WordPress themes as well as RTL languages.
WPML
WPML is a very popular premium WordPress multilingual plugin. Being a premium plugin, it also comes with a few perks such as one year of premium support. With the WPML plugin, building multilingual websites is faster and cheaper than ever before.
All posts, pages, menus, post types can be translated in the language of your choice. Interestingly enough, WPML can also provide you with professional translators to help you translate your website’s content.
qTranslate X
qTranslate X is a free WordPress plugin that offers site owners the possibility of creating multilingual pages. Functionality-wise, it’s similar to WPML and Polylang, being very easy to implement and use. The great thing about the qTranslate X plugin is the fact that users can switch languages instantly while writing or editing their posts.
You’ll also be able to simultaneously edit content in different languages. qTranslate X is also compatible with other plugins and add-ons, including other platforms.
Xili-Language
The Xili-Language plugin is another great option for multilingual websites. This light weight but powerful plugin allows website owners to create multilingual content and change your website’s theme language files depending on the language you want to implement.
Xili-Language is compatible with most themes, as well as popular WordPress plugins. The best thing about this particular translation plugin is that it comes with plenty of tools to help you translate your website.
Google Language Translator
If you’re looking for a way to get your site available in different languages quickly, Google Language Translator might be the perfect plugin for the job. Google Language Translator integrates the Google Translate automatic translator directly into your WordPress website with the touch of a button.
Gtranslate & Google Translate
Gtranslate is another great pick in our list of the best WordPress translation plugins. This free plugin allows website owners to add a Google-powered language switcher to any pages of your site. Gtranslate will also hide the Google Translate bar from the header as well as any popups from Google Translate.
Gtranslate also offers a pretty nifty option to open translated pages in a new window automatically. Users and visitors are then able to switch between the original and translated content freely.
Transposh WordPress Translation
The Transposh WordPress Translation plugins will allow your users or visitors to translate content directly onto your website. This plugin is very interesting and could be very useful for webmasters since it combines automatic translations from Google Translate with user generated translations. Users or visitors simply have to select a piece of text on any translated page and then add their own translation.
Bing Translator Plugin
Bing also offers an automatic translation tool that’s similar to Google Translate. The Big Translator plugin uses Bing Translator to translate your WordPress pages and website automatically. The translation plugin itself was developed by Microsoft Open Technologies but sadly it hasn’t been updated in some time.
Goo Translate Widget
The Goo Translate Widget allows website owners to integrate Google Translate into their WordPress sites. The great thing about Goo Translate is that it’s very easy to use and pretty light weight.
Users need to simply drag and drop the Goo Translate widget into a sidebar and select the language they want to translate before saving the widget settings.
