WordPress Translation Plugins

13 Best WordPress Translation Plugins Compared - 2024

Last modified: May 28, 2023

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The internet is global and by being global it is being used by people from all walks of life, cultures, religions, and of course different languages. And when you first get started with a website you might not be thinking about people on the other side of the world finding and reading your WordPress blog or site content but in reality it is very likely that someone that speaks a different language from yours may come across your site. And should this happen, wouldn’t you want that person to be able to understand and read what you have created? Not only that, but if you want your site to be as global as possible and get it to be as big of a success as it could, you will need to have people who do not speak your language use your site. This may sound impossible and a very difficult thing to accomplish, but translating your website using one of these WordPress translation plugins may be easier than you realize.

WordPress Translation Plugins What Should you incorporate to your WordPress site?

Well we won’t be able to make that decision for you but we can help you come to the right conclusion and find the best translation plugin for you to use. All of these plugins are capable of translating your content into other languages but some are more complicated and come with more features than others. Therefore it is up to you to decide what your goals are for using one of these plugins and once you have that answered you will be able to go through our list and decide which one is the best choice for you. Let’s check out out top WordPress translation plugin choices so you can see what is available and compare them to each other to decide which one you want to use.

# Name Image
1
Weglot
wg-logo-rectangle
More Info
2
Loco Translate
Loco Translate
More Info
3
WP Translate
WP Translate
More Info
4
Polylang
Polylang
More Info
5
Lingotek Translation
Lingotek Translation
More Info
6
Multilanguage
Multilanguage
More Info
7
Google Language Translator
Google Language Translator
More Info
8
Xili-language
Xili-language
More Info
9
qTranslate X
qTranslate X
More Info
10
MultilingualPress
MultilingualPress
More Info
11
Goo Translate Widget
Goo Translate Widget
More Info
12
Transposh
Transposh
More Info
13
ConveyThis Translate
ConveyThis Translate
More Info
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Weglot

wg-logo-rectangle
Let’s kick off the list with one of the most popular WordPress translation plugins, Weglot.
A solid choice amongst WordPress users, Weglot detects, translates and displays the content of your site instantly. With an installation that takes under 5 minutes, Weglot users get access to a first layer of machine translation.
With this plugin you’ll manage all your translations within a separate translations management dashboard. Here you can make edits to translations, add teammates and even order professional translations. You can also do things like create a translation glossary, translate your URL slugs and exclude certain URLs from translation.
The Weglot plugin also follows Google’s best practices for multilingual SEO, with language specific subdirectories, translated metadata and automatically added hreflang tags.
With Weglot you can add more than 100 languages, including custom languages and it’s 100% compatible with all themes and plugins.

Other useful features include:

  • A customizable language switcher
  • Redirection based on browser language
  • Media translation
  • RTL supported languages

Loco Translate

Loco Translate

Let’s kick off our WordPress translation plugins with a crazy one, the Loco Translation WordPress plugin. This is a very popular choice of translation plugins as it currently has about 500,000 active installs. Loco Transnational is even a good choice for developers because it will allow them to offer international versions of their WordPress plugins and themes. Developers will also be provided with localization tools such as extracting strings and generating templates. With this plugin you will be get to use in browser editing of WordPress translation files within the admin section of the plugin.

With the Loco Translation WordPress plugin you will get even more features such as:

  • PO source view with clickable source code references
  • Protected language directory so you can save custom translations
  • Native MO file compilation without the need for Gettext on your system
  • Support for PO features like: comments, plural forms and references
  • Built in WordPress locale codes

And there will be even more features provided with this theme as the developers continue working on it.

WP Translate

WP Translate

This next plugin uses the power of a very famous online presence, Google Translate. The WP Translate plugin will dynamically translate the content of your WordPress site using the power of Google Translate. Since it uses such a strong translation power, any one of your users will be able to use and read your site in whichever language they like as long as it is available from the choice of language options. With this plugin it will add a Google Translate widget to the upper right area of your user’s screen. By having this widget available it will let your website’s visitors translate your WordPress website’s content into any language so your site or blog will become multilingual. There is a recent new addition of WP Translate which is Google Analytics integration so you can see which languages your site’s users are translating your content to.

A few more features of this transnational plugin are:

  • Site your website’s default language
  • Track translation usage
  • Enhanced widget positioning (comes with the Pro version)

Polylang

Polylang

The Polylang translation plugin is a super easy to use option, however the one down side is that you will need to have strong enough language skills to be able to translate your site’s content by yourself, or have someone else do it for you. What you would first do is go to the setting and specify which languages you want your site to be able to support Each language would be added individually and the you need to select a two letter language code for each language your choose. Once this step is done, you will have the ability to provide the translation for: posts, pages, category, menu, etc. You can also select specific things to provide with translation, like only specific posts or pages. Visitors will have the capability to switch between the different languages by using the dedicated widget.

More features that you will get with the Polylang translation plugin are:

  • Categories and post tags as well as some other metas are automatically copied when adding a new post or page translation
  • The language is set either by the content or by the language code in URL
  • You can use as many languages as you want, even RTL (right to left) languages are supported

Lingotek Translation

Lingotek Translation

The Lingotek plugin is a multilingual translation plugin that can easily help you to create and maintain your multi language site. With Lingotek you will be able to use things like the automatic machine translation in addition to allowing you to be able to connect to their growing translator community where you can find and hire translators. This plugin has cloud based localization and translation for WordPress and it comes with: professional, machine, and community translation solutions. The Lingotek plugin works together with Polylang which will allow you to build multilingual or bilingual WordPress sites. You will create your posts, content, tags, etc. and the define a language for each of them.

More features of the Lingotek WordPress translation plugin include:

  • A customizable language switcher that is provided as a widget
  • The admin interface is also multilingual
  • Use as any languages as you want and RTL (right to left) languages are supported

And much more!

Multilanguage

Multilanguage

We have arrived the fifth of our WordPress translation plugins, and this one has a very literal name. The Multilanguage WordPress plugin does just what it says it will do, allow you to translate you WordPress site into various other languages. You can add translated content to lots of things like: posts, pages, widgets, taxonomies, menus and more. Your site visitors can switch between different languages to find which one they are most comfortable with. Multilanguage also supports more than 80 different languages and allows you to easily add more as you need. There are several different language switching widgets where your visitors will be able to choose their desired language.

But the Multilanguage comes with even more features, for example:

  • Choose the default language
  • Translate Open Graph meta tags
  • Add custom code
  • Change display order in the language switcher
  • Choose language flag icon
  • Translation ready admin dashboard

 

 

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Google Language Translator

Google Language Translator

The Google Language Translator plugin is an incredibly lightweight plugin choice. This means that your site won’t be slowed down by having this plugin work with it. What you will need to do once you have this plugin activated is you will have to go to the plugin setting page and then activate the plugin’s status by selecting a checkbox. Next you will choose the original language of your WordPress site and choose the list of languages that you want your content to be able to be translated to.

Then, on your main website there will be a widget displayed to show the translation options and your site’s users will be able to choose which language they prefer to work with. This means that your website’s language can be catered to the desired language of each user leading to a more personal experience for them.

Xili-language

Xili-language

Next up on our WordPress translation plugins list we have the Xili-language plugin. This plugin will help you create a multilingual or bilingual WordPress site. However, there is a downside to using Xili-language and that is in order for this plugin to work you must already be using a translation ready WordPress theme for your site.

The Xili-language plugin will not only allow you to have your site be translated into other languages but you can also  change your theme’s languages files depending on the content language. A cool perk about this plugin is that it can also work with the: Xili-dictionary plugin, Xili-tidy-tags plugin, and Xilitheme–select. The WordPress Xili-language translation plugin is also developer friendly and comes with many hooks ad API which will allow you to personalize your theme’s behavior.

qTranslate X

qTranslate X

The qTranslate X certainly has a big name but it also has a big reputation For a long time this plugin was a very popular choice for WordPress translation plugins, however, over the years it dipped in popularity but now is is making a comeback. This plugin is actually a bit similar to the Polylang plugin. Once you have qTranslate X installed, you will select your default language and the other languages that you want your site to be translated into and then you will create a 2 letter code for each language chosen. The language code will be added to the URL so it will define which language that URL’s content should be translated to. By doing this t will also have benefits to your SEO.

Your site’s visitors will be able to choose which language they prefer to use and if they decide they want to switch languages they will be able to do that in the widget. This plugin also allows you to write your content in various languages simultaneously. qTranslate X can also work with various plugins like: WooCommerce, Yoast SEO,  All in One SEO, Gravity forms and WP Bakery.

MultilingualPress

MultilingualPress

The MultilingualPress WordPress plugin is a little different from some of the other plugins we have mentioned so far as it uses WordPress multisite so you can connect stand alone versions of your site that were built using other languages. You can connect an endless amount of sites together and set a main language for each specific site. A nice perk with the MultilingualPress plugin is that there is no lock in effect when you disable it so no data loss or garbage output will occur, each site will still work individually. Currently, this plugin’s language manager has 174 languages to choose from and you can edit them. This plugin also makes editing your posts super easy. You will not have to switch screens in order to edit the same post in other languages, all of the post’s languages can be managed on one screen.

More features of the MultilingualPress plugin include:

  • SEO friendly URLs and permalinks
  • Add translation links to any navigation menu
  • Synchronized trash
  • Use specific language settings for the back end
  • Easily duplicate sites from one template
  • Support for custom post types

Goo Translate Widget

Goo Translate Widget

The Goo Translate Widget plugin is number 10 of our WordPress translation plugins and it is another way you can incorporate Google Translate with your WordPress site. This plugin will also help you expand your global reach fast and easily. To use this plugin on your site just install it and then you can drag the widget to the sidebar of your site, select your language and then save widget settings. This will allow people from all over the world to use your website in the language of their choosing. Providing you with the potential to grow your site’s users and therefore views and clicks as well. This widget is also lightweight so you don’t have to worry about it slowing down you site in any way.

More features of the Goo Translate Widget WordPress plugin are:

  • The ability to use Google Analytics to track translation traffic
  • No manual translation s needed
  • No shortcodes
  • No programming skills are required.

Transposh

Transposh

The Transposh WordPress plugin is actually a filter for WordPress that provides a unique approach to blog translation. While Transposh was made somewhat with the idea to be used for blogs, it can be used for other written content on your site as well. By using this plugin you will be able to combine your blog with automatic translation as well as human translation that will be aided by your users with a very easy to use incontext interface. If you user wants to assist in translation all they will need to do is select any text on a translated page and add their own translation. The Transposh WordPress plugin can also support RTL (right to left) languages so even more language diversity for your website.

More features of this WordPress translation plugin include:

  • Multiple options for widget appearance
  • Translation of external plugins without needing .po/.mo files
  • RSS feeds are translated as well
  • Buddypress integration
  • Supports 117 languages

ConveyThis Translate

ConveyThis Translate

With the ConveyThis Translate WordPress translation plugin you can quickly and easily translate you WordPress site into a variety of languages. With this plugin you will have access to more than 90 different languages that you can translate the site of your content to. You don’t need to be a developer or have serious tech skills to use this plugin.

ConveyThis Translate will automatically detect your site’s content and then provide instant and accurate machine translation. It can also optimize all of the translated pages according to Google best practices in terms of a multilingual site. You will also be able to view and edit all of the performed translations by using one interface. For more info bout ConveyThis Translate you can check out this video.

 

Final Thoughts

I hope this article was helpful in helping you make the decision of which of these WordPress translation plugins you should use. Some of them offer a bit more features than others and depending on your computer skills and how much time and effort you want to put in depends on which translation plugin you will decide on. Figure out what your needs are so you can make the decision that is best for you.

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