Although English remains the most common written language online, you can reach millions of international internet users by translating your content into other languages.
WordPress translation plugins are a cost-effective way of publishing content in multiple languages and many great free and premium translation solutions are available.
In this article, I would like to share with you the best WordPress translation plugins on the market.
1. Weglot
Weglot is an online translation service that integrates with WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, Magento, and many other platforms. The company boasts clients such as Microsoft, Sennheiser, and Polaroid.
Launched in France in 2016, Weglot is a premium translation service. Although a free plan is available for Weglot, since it is limited to 2,000 translated words and 2,000 translated pageviews per month, it is only really practical to use this plan to test the service.
Weglot can automatically translate your content into over 100 languages. The company uses Microsoft, DeepL, Google, and Yandex to generate translations.
You will see your translations on Weglot.com. You and your team can manually make changes to automatic translations from here. You can also request for a professional translation for an additional fee.
Website visitors can easily switch between your original and translated pages. You can also redirect visitors to the correct language based on their browser’s language settings.
Weglot supports multilingual SEO, which means that page metadata, menu links, headers, and other design elements, are translated too. All translated pages will be indexed by search engines.
The Weglot WordPress plugin helps you integrate Weglot into your WordPress website.
In the main configuration page, you need to enter your Weglot API key, set the language your content is published in, and select the languages you want to translate into.
You will find an option to set the URLs of translated posts and pages, but translations still need to be viewed from your main account.
The main configuration page allows you to change the design of the language button. There are also options to exclude URLs from translation, translate emails, and allow users to search your website in their own language.
The cost of using Weglot is based on how many words you want to be translated and the number of languages you need support for.
Weglot’s starter premium plan retails at €9.90 per month or €99 per year. This plan allows 10,000 words to be translated into one other language. The business plan costs €19.90 per month or €190 per year. 50,000 words and three translated languages are supported in this plan.
The pro plan allows 200,000 translated words and supports five translated languages. It retails at €49 per month or €490 per year.
And the advanced plan includes 1,000,000 translated words and 10 translated languages, retailing at €199 per month or €1,990 per year.
If you have the budget for it, Weglot is one of the best translation services on the market today.
More Info / Download Integration Plugin
2. WPML
The WordPress Multilingual Plugin, often abbreviated to WPML, is one of the oldest translation solutions for WordPress. According to the developers, WPML is active on almost 1 million websites — an impressive statistic when you consider the fact this WordPress plugin is not available free of charge.
WPML supports over 40 languages and allows you to add your own variants of languages. Translated content can be published on the same domain using sub-directories or sub-domains, or on a unique domain.
Whilst automatic translation is supported by WPML, the plugin is widely known for giving you the tools to translate everything yourself. You just need to add each translation to your posts and pages. Translation services can, however, be integrated directly into WPML.
WPML’s Multilingual SEO features are fantastic too. The plugin gives you full control over translated URLs and lets you translate page meta, theme, and plugin information. It can detect the browser language of website visitors as well.
Three licenses are available for WPML.
The Multilingual Blog license costs $29 per year, the Multilingual CMS license costs $79 per year, and the Multilingual Agency license costs $159 per year. These licenses can be renewed in later years for $21, $59, and $119, respectively.
The affordable Multilingual Blog license is designed for one website and lets you translate posts, pages, custom post types, tags, categories, custom taxonomies, and menus.
The $79 Multilingual CMS license increases usage to three websites and adds support for page builders, custom fields, eCommerce plugins, translation widgets, and the ability to translate text in themes and plugins.
You can remove the website usage restriction altogether by upgrading to the $159 Multilingual Agency license.
It is easy to see why WPML is so popular. The WordPress plugin is fairly priced, has great support for eCommerce websites, and allows you to tweak every page for search engines.
Content can be translated manually, however automatic translation is available to those that need it. Both the CMS and Agency licenses give you up to 2000 words of automatic translation between any language pair on your websites.
Automatic translation beyond 2,000 words is reasonably priced. WMPL charges a monthly fee of $2 for 5,000 words, $7 for 15,000 words, $15 for 50,000 words, $17 for 100,000 words, and $72 for 500,000 words.
3. Polylang
Polylang is a translation WordPress plugin that lets you build a multilingual website.
Polylang lets you translate posts, pages, categories, tags, custom post types, taxonomies, menus, and widgets. Translated content can be placed on sub-directories, sub-domains, or separate domains.
The plugin is easy to use. The first thing you need to do is add some languages, one of which you need to specify as default.
Dozens of languages are available. Information such as the name, language code, and flag, are pre-entered for each language, however you can change these values if you wish.
Any language packs you add to your WordPress site will also be automatically downloaded and updated.
A string translations page lets you add translations for important strings, such as your website name and tagline, for each of the languages you have added.
You can change the default language of any post or page on your website and then add translations for other languages. Short translations can be added, or you can click on the + symbol and add a whole new page for a specific language.
Polylang Pro is available from €99 for a one-website license and €198 for a three-website license.
Upgrading allows you to place translations on the same URL and translate URL slugs. Other features include duplicating posts across languages, enabling and disabling languages, and support for third-party plugins such as Advanced Custom Fields Pro and The Events Calendar.
Another plugin, Polylang for WooCommerce, is available for the same price as Polylang Pro. It helps you translate all aspects of your WooCommerce store.
Both Polylang Pro and Polylang for WooCommerce are included in the Polylang Business Pack that retails from €139.
With over 500,000 active installations, Polylang is one of the most popular translation solutions for WordPress. This is because it is so easy to use and the core version gives you many features that other solutions charge for.
More Info / Download Integration Plugin
4. TranslatePress
TranslatePress is an easy-to-use WordPress translation plugin that allows you to translate posts, pages, and strings used in WordPress themes and plugins.
It comes with support for manual and automatic translation, and also lets you translate images, sliders, and other media. WooCommerce and custom post types are supported too.
You can add translations to any page on your website using a live editor. It works the same as the Customizer by showing the front-end of your website on the right-hand side of the page.
Clicking on any part of your page will load the string or content in the column on the left-hand side. You can view the page as any WordPress user role and create suitable translations for all the languages you have added.
A total of 221 languages are available in TranslatePress. In the free version of the plugin, you can set one language as your default language and add one more language for translations.
You need to upgrade to TranslatePress Pro in order to add an unlimited number of languages.
Automatic translation can be performed by either Google Translate or DeepL. However, you do need to upgrade to TranslatePress Pro to use DeepL.
A personal one-website license for TranslatePress Pro costs €79 per year. In addition to unlocking an unlimited number of languages, upgrading also gives you access to the SEO Pack Addon. This gives you features such as URL slug translation, Yoast SEO sitemap support, translation for Facebook social graph tags, and more.
All plugin features can be unlocked with the business and developer licenses. The business license costs €139 per year and grants usage on three websites, whilst the developer license costs €199 per year and has no website restriction.
Additional features include redirecting users based upon the language set in their browser, configuring different menu items for other languages, and allowing staff to manage translations.
TranslatePress is a versatile solution. The core version of the plugin allows you to enter translations manually but also has support for automatic translation via Google Translate.
Upgrading will make your translations SEO-friendly and allow you to cater towards more than two languages on your website.
More Info / Download Integration Plugin
5. GTranslate
If you are looking for a user-friendly translation solution that just works, check out GTranslate. I have been using the plugin on my personal blog for around a year and I love how straightforward it is.
GTranslate uses Google Translate to automatically translate your website into 103 languages. It will translate posts, pages, categories, tags, menus, widgets, themes, and plugins. WooCommerce is supported by the plugin too.
Visitors can change the language of your pages using a multi-language widget. There are 10 different widget designs that allow you to display languages using a dropdown menu, flags, text, and more.
The widget can be easily added to any sidebar on your website. Alternatively, you can integrate it into your website using a PHP command or copying and pasting the HTML and CSS code.
Everything in GTranslate is configured from one central settings page.
From here, you can define your default language, activate analytics, select the widget design and where the widget is displayed, and enable auto-switching to the visitor’s browser language.
If you upgrade to GTranslate Pro you can also configure the sub-directory and sub-domain URL structure.
Upgrading also allows translated pages to be indexed by search engines and lets you manually edit the translations of pages.
GTranslate Pro only costs $7.99 per month if you want support for translating into one language. It will cost you $17.99 per month to add support for all languages.
Page URLs can be translated if you upgrade to the $27.99 business plan, and you can use country-specific domains for translated pages if you select the $37.99 enterprise plan.
If you like the results provided by Google Translate and want all translations to be automated, GTranslate is a fantastic solution that is incredibly easy to use.
You will, however, need to upgrade if you want your translated pages to be indexed by search engines.
More Info / Download Integration Plugin
6. Google Website Translator
A good alternative to GTranslate is Google Website Translator. This WordPress plugin also uses Google Translate for translations, so you can translate content into 100+ languages.
It can translate everything in your pages, including content, menu items, widget titles, and theme and plugin strings.
Every page on your website can be translated using the language widget that can be added to your website design using a widget, shortcode, or PHP code.
There are a few different inline and tabbed designs of the widget and you can also choose to display country flags next to the languages.
The general settings page lets you define your website’s default language and whether you want to allow content to be translated into all languages or only some of them.
In the advanced settings area, you can add custom CSS and choose to hide the language selector widget from specific pages, posts, and categories. You can also customize the widget template and enable Google Analytics tracking.
The developers call the pro version of Google Website Translator the ultimate WordPress translation plugin.
Retailing at $50, this version lets you change what languages are shown to mobile and tablet users. It also allows translations to be indexed by search engines and gives you greater control over the design of the language widget.
A lot of comparisons can be drawn between GTranslate and Google Website Translator, as they both allow automatic translations on your website by using Google Translate.
I recommend testing both to see which one you prefer.
More Info / Download Integration Plugin
Final Thoughts
I hope you have enjoyed this look at the best WordPress translation plugins on the market.
As always, I highly recommend testing multiple solutions to get a better understanding of what is available and which plugin or service fits your needs best, as one size does not fit all.
If you manage a corporate website or an online store, you may want to hire a professional translation service to manually translate key pages for targeted regions.
Blogs and other websites that publish a high volume of content may want to consider subscribing to an automatic translation service so that every new post or page is translated.
Those of you who don’t want to spend a lot of money on translation may want to consider manually translating content using free translation services such as Google Translate. This can be a time-consuming endeavour, but it gives you full control over what is published and keeps translation costs low.
Do you have any questions about the best WordPress translation plugins? Ask us in the comments!
