Looking for the best WordPress translation plugin to create a multilingual website? With plenty of options available in the WordPress plugin repository, it can be overwhelming to choose the right translation plugin for your website. In this article, we’ve selected the best WordPress translation plugins to help you find the ideal plugin that matches your needs.
Translation plugins allow you to build websites for a wide variety of users. While English is the main used language on the internet, it covers only about 25% of the spoken language on the internet. This implies that if you’re using English as the only supported language on your site, then you’re missing out on 75% of the other internet users. You must always translate your website to cover as many languages as possible ranging from Chinese to Spanish, Arabic, German, and many more.
Automatic Vs Manual Translation
Translation plugins come with two different methods. Both methods let you translate your site but there are some dissimilarities. Some of the featured WordPress translation plugins in our roundup allow you to use both methods while others are just focused on one method.
- Automatic Translation. The automatic translation uses a computer to translate your WordPress site. This method is fast and efficient but can lead to errors and weird phrases because computers aren’t 100% accurate.
- Manual Translation. You’ll have to DIY or hire somebody to translate the whole site for you. Manual translation can be expensive and time-consuming but rest assured, you’ll get perfect translations. For fast and accurate results, you can use automatic translation then go back to manually correct any errors.
Top 5 Translation Plugins for WordPress
| Plugin | Free | Premium |
| Loco Translate | Yes | $5.95 / month |
| Polylang | Yes | $110.33 one-time |
| GTranslate | Yes | $14.99 / month |
| TranslatePress | Yes | $87.97 / year |
| WPML | No | $29 / year |
1. Loco Translate
Loco Translate is the most popular WordPress translation plugin with over a million active installs. The plugin lets you translate WordPress themes and plugins in your browser. With this, you can easily develop multi-language websites and applications. If you’re using a translation ready WordPress theme or plugin, Loco Translate can automatically translate them for you by creating the necessary translation files for each language. You can invite unlimited translators to help you correct the errors resulting from the automatic translation.
Loco Translate is available in both free and pro versions. The pro version lets you assign roles and privileges to your translators. You can translate unlimited projects, languages, and assets using the pro versions. The pro version is available from $5.95 per month.
Learn WordPress: Check out 500+ free WordPress tutorials.
2. Polylang
Polylang is another popular WordPress translation plugin with plenty of features to turn your WordPress into a bilingual or multilingual website. Unlike Loco Translate, this plugin allows you to translate your content including posts, pages, medial, categories, and tags. The pro version offers advanced features to translate custom post types, widgets, menus, and URLs. Polylang is undoubtedly one of the feature-rich WordPress translation plugins.
It integrates with your WordPress admin and doesn’t add extra tables. You can then create content and define the language for each of them. The plugin will automatically download and update the language packs. This plugins is compatible with most SEO plugins to make your website discoverable. If you wish to use an automatic translation, you can install the Lingotek Translation add-on and translate your site with one tap.
Polylang Pro version is available starting from $110.33 for a single site.
3. GTranslate
GTranslate is a translation plugin with rich features both in the free and paid versions. The plugin has over 100,000 installs on WordPress and more than 4 million downloads across different platforms. GTranslate uses Google and Bing to provide automatic translation for free. The plugin supports almost all languages. With the free version, you can also enjoy unlimited words and pageviews.
The paid versions come with advanced features to make your translation accurate and SEO ready. The pro version lets you increase international visibility by indexing the translated pages. You can also go back to the automatically translated content to manual update and correct any errors to make it near perfect. Other advanced features include URL translation for multilingual SEO and language hosting for higher rankings on local search engines.
Pricing for the GTranslate Pro starts at $164.89 per year with the first month free. You can also pay monthly starting from $14.99.
4. TranslatePress
TranslatePress is a full-featured WordPress translation plugin that lets you translate your entire website from the front-end. The TranslatePress plugin is GPL and self-hosted which implies that you’ll own the translations indefinitely. The plugin supports 221 languages, WooCommerce, themes, and most common site builders. The free version offers features such as manual translation and automatic translation using Google Translate. It offers image translation to serve different images for different languages on your website.
If you want to experience the true power of TranslatePress, upgrade to the paid versions. TranslatePress pro comes with powerful translation add-ons to extend its performance. With the paid version, you have unlimited languages to choose from, an SEO pack to translate meta information for multilingual SEO, create translator accounts for other users, and automatic language detection to serve preferred languages based on their IP addresses or browser settings.
Pricing for TranslatePress starts at $87.97 per year.
SEO Offer: Optimize your site with Semrush Pro special 14 days free trial.
5. WPML (WordPress Multilingual Plugin)
WPML is a powerful WordPress translation plugin made for both corporate websites and simple blogs. The plugin allows you to translate the entire sites including pages, posts, custom types, taxonomy, many more elements. It seamlessly integrates with all themes, plugins, and page builders that use WordPress API. With just a single WordPress install, you can serve over 40 languages on your site. Exclusive to WPML plugin only is the feature to add your language variants, such as Canadian French, using the plugin’s language editor.
If you’re running an e-commerce site with WooCommerce, you can use WPML to translate the products, sales, and promotions pages easily to reach an international audience. You can send content to inbuilt translation services for automatic translation and edit the translations later. What’s more interesting is the reliable and support and frequent updates to make the plugin more powerful and stable.
WPML doesn’t have a free version. Pricing for the plugin starts at $29 yearly for one site support. You also need WordPress 3.9 and above to run the plugin.
Conclusion
These are the top 5 translation plugins for WordPress right now which you can use to create a multilingual site. The plugins offer competitive features and powerful solutions to help you reach a wider audience for your brand, services, and products. Selecting the best plugin will depend on your preferences and the type of business. While some of the plugins come in free versions, we recommend the pro versions as they provide all the features you need to create a complete and full-functional multilingual site. The plugins are among the best-selling plugins in terms of customer downloads and installs, so you can rest assured that whichever plugin you choose, you’re going to get a good deal.
Leave a Reply
Your email is safe with us.