Do you want to translate your WordPress site in multiple languages? Wondering where to start? In this article, we will show you how to easily create a multilingual WordPress site.
No you do not need to setup a multi-site or have separate WordPress installs for each language. You will be able to easily translate your WordPress posts, pages, tags, categories, and themes into as many languages as you like.
We will look at both common approaches adopted by WordPress multilingual site owners.
The first approach allows you to manually translate all the content into languages of your choice.
The second method does not actually create a multilingual site, but instead it adds machine translations of your existing content by using the Google Translate service.
It goes without saying that manually translating your content is a much better approach. This allows you to maintain quality throughout your website. You can translate the content yourself or hire professionals to do that.
If you do not have the resources, and you still want users to be able to see content in other languages, then you can go for Google Translate. This will add a multi-language switcher for users to select a language, and the content will be translated using Google Translate. The downside of this approach is that the quality of translations will not be as good.
Let’s start by looking into building a multilingual WordPress site with manual translations.
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To translate, you need to click on the button next to a language and then add content for that language.
Repeat the process for all languages. Once you are done, you can publish your posts and pages.
It’s important to note that Polylang works with custom post types, so it can definitely help you make your woocommerce store multilingual.
You can also translate , or any you may be using.
If you want to translate categories, then go to Posts » Categories.
Add a category in your default language and then click on the plus icon for each language to start adding translations.
Adding a language switcher allows users to select a language when viewing your site. Polylang makes it super simple. Just go to Appearance » Widgets and add the language switcher widget to your sidebar or another widget-ready area.
You can choose a drop down, or use language names with flags. Once you are done, click the save button to store your widget settings.
You can now preview your site to see the language switcher in action.
While adding human translations definitely creates a better user experience, you may not have the resources or time to do that. In that case, you can try using Google Translate to automatically translate content on your site.
First thing you need to do is install and activate the plugin. Upon activation, visit Settings » Google Language Translator to configure the plugin.
The plugin allows you to select the languages available with Google Translate. You can even remove Google’s branding from translation. This is a highly customizable plugin, so you need to go through the settings and configure it to your liking.
For more details check out our tutorial on how to with video and text instructions on how to set up the plugin.
That’s all, we hope this article helped you learn how to create a multilingual site in WordPress. You should also look at our article on how to .
If you are looking for a multilingual WordPress theme also referred to translation-ready themes, check out our guide on how to that also has an easy way to translate existing WordPress themes.
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