Top 5+ Free WordPress Translation Plugins for Multilingual Websites
The moment has come. You have worked hard on a project and now you are ready to share it with the world. Since English is the modern day’s lingua franca, you most likely wrote your content in English. However, the number of people who do not speak English at all is quite large, and you should not let that fact slip your mind. If you would like for your content to go proper viral, it is of utmost importance to build a multilingual website. There is literally a plethora of WordPress translation plugins to choose from, so we would like to make things a bit easier for you. We have done our research and we have narrowed the choice down to the top 5 free and helpful WordPress translation plugins that can surely help you take your business to the next level:
Polylang is a multilingual plugin that is widely used by many. You can download it for free or buy the Polylang Pro (from 99.00€ – 495.00€). In this article though, we will tackle down the characteristics of the free version.
It has a rating of 4.7 stars and, according to the official website, more than 500.000 active installs. This plugin enables you to add languages to your website and to manage the translation process as well. You can choose between manual or automatic translations, and even hire professionals through the plugin for further assistance. This is possible because Polylang integrates with the Lingotek Translation plugin, which ensures machine, community and professional translation.
In general, Polylang’s main interface is quite similar to the one of the prevalently used premium plugin – WPML. It is very easy to use, which is one of its main advantages. Polylang can translate posts, tags, pages, categories, custom taxonomies, media, custom post types, as well as menus and widgets. Regarding the WooCommerce content, the free Polylang version does not cover it. In order to translate it, you would need to install the Polylang for WooCommerce plugin (from 99.00€ – 495.00€). As with many free plugins, user support is not included and is available only to Polylang Pro users.
This is a great free translation plugin that lets you create multilingual websites with ease. It comes with almost the same features WPML has, but you might need to activate the Lingotek Translation plugin in order to use them all.
Join 40,000+ websites that are saving time, money, and energy thanks to ConveyThis. As the ultimate translation tool, ConveyThis provides amazing neural machine translation. Their AI was trained for many years so that you can have the best final result. In other words, you will have almost zero need to proofread or edit your translations. Besides perfect translation quality, you will get an amazing user experience.
ConveyThis comes packed with a powerful language switcher that is highly customizable and that can be adapted to the theme of your site. Moreover, your translations will be SEO-optimized. ConveyThis translates meta tags such as title, keyword, and description. It also adds a hreflang tag, so search engines will understand that your site has translated pages.
Additionally, your site won’t be slowed down since all the translations are stored and served from ConveyThis’ servers. Plus, all translations are securely stored and will never be passed on to third parties so safety is guaranteed. If you like what you hear, you can get the starter package at 10$ or try other pricing options.
This is a multilingual WordPress plugin that actually lets you translate texts from the front-end, and this is its biggest plus. It comes with a 4.5 star rating and with more than 100k installations. Free and premium versions are both available (pricing plans range from 79.00€ – 199.00€).
Its translation interface is user-friendly and it comes decked out with powerful features that facilitate the creation of multilingual websites. TranslatePress Multilingual is also self-hosted, which means that you will own all your translations. It is good to note that, unlike Polylang, it supports WooCommerce as well without using additional plugins. Custom post types are also supported, and it comes compatible with all the themes and plugins. Translation is displayed in real-time. If, at any point, you have to modify your pages, you will get live previews of how the altered content would look like.
TranslatePress Multilingual also integrates with Google Translate. This means that you can set up not only manual but also automatic translation, by using your Google API Key. If you wish to add more languages to the list, you can also install the Multiple Languages add-on and choose from more than 221 secondary languages.
Translated content is SEO-friendly, but of course, as with aforementioned plugins, you can install some additional SEO-related plugins to bring traffic to your website.
When we are talking about WordPress translation plugins we could not forget to mention Loko. Loco Translate is a widely popular plugin with a 4.9-star rating and over 500,000 active installs that enable you to easily translate WordPress themes and plugins directly from your WordPress dashboard.
It was originally created for developers, therefore, it includes a very handy feature that provides you with localization tools for extracting strings and generating templates. It also supports integration with automatic translation services.
Its user-friendly interface makes it popular for beginners too. This plugin allows you to create and update language translation files directly in your theme or plugin. What also makes it very practical and convenient for use is that it comes with an inbuilt protected language directory for saving custom translations.
Loco Translate’s PO file editor allows you to use some keyboard shortcuts like “Done and Next: Ctrl ↵”, “Next string: Ctrl ↓” and similar that can speed up your translations.
As for the support, Loco Translate provides useful help documentation and you can always look for answers via the WordPress repository support forum. Plus, this is a totally free plugin.
GTranslate is a Goggle Translate plugin and, with a rating of 4.9 stars, is among the most popular ones. Premium versions are also available, and the cost varies from $5.99 – $34.99 per month.
It comes with more than 103 languages available and with loads of widgets that can help you build a remarkable multilingual website. This plugin also hides the ‘Suggest better translation’ pop-up and the Google top frame once the translation is completed. Users can open translated pages in a new window and then switch between original content and translation. GTranslate includes a multilingual interface and it lets you translate posts, pages, categories, tags, menus, widgets, themes and plugins.
Content is translated automatically with this plugin. If you wish to make any manual changes and correct translations, that is available only if you upgrade to one of the paid versions, which would also enable you to add human translations. One of the many great features of GTranslate is that it integrates with Google Analytics. This tool is essential if you wish to measure and understand the visitors’ behavior on your website.
Transposh is the final free translation plugin for WordPress that we will include on our list.
This plugin is also widely used and it has a 4.3 star rating. What sets it apart from others is that it allows website visitors to edit non-English texts and to translate your content at any time. They can simply select desired texts and add a translation. Who will have the option to make edits can be entirely up to you. Transposh actually has a feature that enables you to choose which users you will give the editing permission to. This option comes in handy if you happen to realize that not everyone has submitted quality translations.
Transposh supports more than 110 languages (RTL/LTR layouts included) and it translates literally all the content on your website, including comments.
Conclusion
With the choice of the right WordPress translation plugins, multilingual website creation can be as easy as 1-2-3. You could reach a global audience and some very lucrative markets, all of which could potentially help you further develop your business. By choosing any of the selected free translation plugins for WordPress, you definitely cannot go wrong.
We hope that you found this article to be helpful. If you liked it, please feel free to check out some of these articles as well!