Learning to translate your WordPress website has plenty of benefits. For starters, you open up your business to a wider area of traffic, opportunity, and income. What’s more, you have a greater number of people you can market to, and a way to diversify your income streams throughout the year. WordPress provides many plugins to help, but we think Weglot is one of the best.
In this post, we’ll look at how to translate a WordPress website using the Weglot plugin. Here’s a full list of what the article will cover:
What Translation Is (And Its Related Concepts)
If you take one language and convert it to another, this is translation. You likely use this on a regular, yet informal basis using a service such as Google Translate:
In general, language translation is a simple core concept, yet has a lot of hidden complexity. For instance, you also have related language services to consider, such as localization.
This is where the translation is adapted to local customs, concerns, measurements, currencies, and other locale-specific aspects. It’s a crucial part of the translation process, for many of the same reasons direct language translation is.
Why Translate WordPress Site Is Beneficial
A primary reason for translating your website is to help expand your audience reach and improve the User Experience (UX). Language barriers often deter speakers of other languages from exploring and engaging with content. For instance, over 60 percent of the internet is in English, yet this only reaches around 15 percent of its user base. For another viewpoint, consider how two-thirds of English speakers would leave a site that hasn’t been translated into English.
As such, multiple language options can help you cater to a diverse audience, which will help increase website traffic and your potential business opportunities. Here are even more reasons to consider a multilingual website:
- Translation can boost your search engine optimization (SEO) as it enables your site to have greater visibility in multilingual search results.
- You can demonstrate cultural sensitivity and inclusivity by making your website available in multiple languages, showing respect for different cultures. This can build trust and rapport with your international customers.
- Translating your site can also give you a competitive advantage in global markets. This lets you stand out in regions where competitors may not have localized content.
On the whole, it’s a worthy investment to translate your WordPress website. It helps to broaden your global footprint and can lead to increased engagement, customer satisfaction, and revenue. Even better, it’s a breeze to implement.
Introducing Weglot: the Best Way to Translate Your WordPress Website
The translation process for a WordPress website can take a number of different forms. For instance, you could use machine translation services such as Google Translate to convert your content. However, as you know from many articles across the web, this isn’t always going to be an accurate way to translate your writing.
Another consideration is how much content you should translate. Unless there is a specific reason to do so, every word on your site needs a conversion. There are also technical considerations such as hreflang tags – a notorious area that requires deep knowledge to implement.
However, there’s one WordPress plugin that can carry out all of these facets for you without breaking a sweat – Weglot.
This uses a third-party dashboard to help you manage all of your translations. Here’s a quick summary of what the plugin achieves:
- It detects all of your content on an ongoing basis. This includes archives, error pages, taxonomies, metadata, and more.
- You get an automatic first layer of machine translation for all your content. It uses services such as DeepL, Microsoft Translator, and Google Translate. This will ensure you capture all content.
- Weglot implements a language switcher to help visitors find their preferred language. Even better, you can customize this in full.
There’s plenty more Weglot can provide, but instead of talking, we can show you. For the rest of the article, we’ll discuss how the service can help you translate your site.
How to Translate Your WordPress Website Using Weglot
When it comes to WordPress, there are two initial tasks to carry out. First, sign up for a 10-day free trial on the Weglot website:
Install Weglot Plugin
Next, install the WordPress plugin for your site. You’ll want to head to the Plugins > Add New Plugin page, search for “Weglot”, the install and activate it:
Once this is complete, you can begin to translate your site. While you’re in WordPress, head to the Weglot screen to enter your API key. You can find this within your Weglot Dashboard. Next, begin to set up the language switcher.
To open the settings, select an Original Language, then one or more Destination Languages. This will give you settings to customize the language switcher:
At this point, click the Edit My Translations button in WordPress to head to Weglot. It’s here you’ll start to translate your site.
Editing Translations
There are a lot of screens within the Weglot dashboard, but we will only look at the most crucial. You should see a list of languages you use as translations:
If you click one, you’ll open the Translation List:
This shows you a line-by-line breakdown of every piece of text on your site. You’ll notice that there are already translations in place. You can customize them to your liking, or even order professional translations from the dashboard.
If you need to see these translations on screen and in context, you can do so through the Translations > Visual Editor screen:
This lets you check how those translations will look on the front end while giving you greater scope to make them perfect. From here, you can browse your site, and see how those translations look.
Conclusion
With the Weglot plugin, you can translate your WordPress website in mere minutes. What’s more, you don’t need any coding knowledge, or even a manual in most cases. Weglot is intuitive, comprehensive, and cost-effective. It’s arguably the best translation service on the market for WordPress users and automates almost every part of the process. This is perfect if you need to dedicate your time to your business rather than bilingual content.
Weglot’s premium plans begin from $10 per month, and there’s a 10-day free trial available. If you have any questions, let us know in the comments section below!
