Do you have a website, a blog, or an e-commerce site and would like it to cater to an international audience? You are planning to translate your website in one or more foreign languages ? Your website is built on WordPress, the most widely used open source CMS (content system management) solution in the world (over 28% of websites worldwide use WordPress). Selecting the right plugin will make it much easier for you to make your website multilingual. There is a wide range of plugins to choose from, so here are our Top 5 best WordPress (WP) plugins that will allow you to make your WordPress site multilingual with a few clicks!
Why make your website multilingual?
A European Commission study reveals that 9 out of 10 Internet users in the EU prefer to visit a site in their own language when given the choice. 42% never buy products from sites that are not in their native language.
Having a multilingual website allows you to communicate directly in the language of your audience and, thus, reassure them. This increases the number of leads by allowing a larger number of targeted people to understand what you are offering. You increase sales substantially; some studies even mention a 100% increase in sales for each new language integrated into an e-commerce site! From an SEO point of view, the translation of all your content will be favourable to the positioning of your website in search engines.
Know more: What are the advantages of a multilingual website today ?
Top 5 best plugins to make your WordPress site multilingual
Owing to its structure and extensions, WordPress makes it easy to manage multilingual websites, so why miss out! To transform your WordPress site into a truly multilingual website with a language switcher, choose the plugin that best meets your needs and expectations. Here is our selection of the top 5 WordPress translation plugins.
#1 – WPML
Probably the most used plugin to make multilingual sites or blogs; there are more than 400,000 websites that use it!
The cons:
- A little more complex to start with in terms of use compared to some competitors,
- paid and without free trial
The pros:
- one of the oldest, tried-and-tested applications
- a reliable solution with clean code!
This multilingual WordPress plugin offers over 40 languages by default. The language editor also allows you to add variants of each language (such as Canadian French or Mexican Spanish).
The different language contents can be managed in the same domain (in language directories), in sub-domains or in completely different domains. Handy features for managing and optimising translations: translation management dashboard, job queues, side-by-side translation editor. More on: https://wpml.org/fr/fonctionnalites/
#2 – Polylang
French challenger (hurray!) Polylang is already 9 years old and boasts of more than 100,000 active installations.
With this WordPress translation plugin, you can write your pages (posts, pages, files, media, widgets, tags, etc.) in French and then choose the language from more than the 25 offered.
Here too, the language is defined by the content or by the language code in the URL, or you can use a different sub-domain or domain per language.
The free version of the Polylang plugin may be quite sufficient and if not, many extensions and a pro version in the form of licenses are available. More: https://fr.wordpress.org/plugins/polylang/
#3 – Weglot Translate
Free for sites of less than 2,000 words, WeGlot Translate includes machine translation for over 60 languages. With its real-time, SEO-optimised translations, it can also integrate professional translations. In fact, proofreading / translation optimisation is often necessary. Let’s say it’s an initial 1st level translation; a time saver before getting a perfect translation to break into new markets.
The technology is different because here we leave WordPress to manage all the translated versions directly in the WeGlot platform. More: https://fr.wordpress.org/plugins/weglot/
#4 – MultilingualPress
MultilingualPress is a free plugin for multisite management, but its support is available for a fee. Designed entirely for WordPress, this plugin allows you to benefit from automatic content translations without even having to change your website. Need to add a new language? It’s easy! Just duplicate as subsite and define the new language. More: https://multilingualpress.org/
#5 – Google Website Translator
Based on Google Translate, this plugin allows you to translate your website into over 100 languages. Easy to install, Google Website Translator offers many custom features (design, style, alignments, etc.). More: https://fr.wordpress.org/plugins/google-website-translator/
With these free WordPress plugins, easy access to new international markets is a growth opportunity for many companies. Pay close attention, however, to the quality of these translations, which you are often not able to check yourself. Although their quality is constantly improving, machine translations cannot replace human translations:
- translation intelligence,
- respecting subtleties,
- play on words,
- cultural adaptations,
- respecting the brand’s editorial charter, etc.
To make your website multilingual, these plugins can be of great help, opening the door to a new world of possibilities. The support of a professional translator will ensure that the messages you convey to your new audience are secure. Learn more about professional web translation services.