With over 6000+ languages in the world, there’s a lot of websites out there that contain multiple languages to choose from, in order to read the site. Since WordPress powers about 43% of websites that exist online, there are multilingual plugins to help site owners translate their content in most languages.
What is a WordPress Multilingual plugin?
A WordPress multilingual plugin is a tool to help you translate your site to whatever language you wish. The plugin is designed to sort through your content in your primary language, and then you can translate them word-by-word, and line-by-line.You can offer as many translated versions of your site to your visitors.
Now, there are also automatic translation plugins too, that produce a fast translated content, but it may not be as accurate as manually creating the content, and could be seen as spam by search engines. Most of them use translation services like Google Translate, to quickly convert your written content to another language.
Additionally, this is different from installing WordPress in your own language, as that only deals with how you choose to use the WordPress admin area, not the final content that you write. Multilingual plugins, in the terms of this article, are strictly for the frontend content on your site, from your posts and pages, and navigational menus.
In having a site translated into another language, you open up more opportunities in welcoming new business and visitors, which means potentially more money.
What is better - automatic translator plugins or using a multilingual plugin?
While you’ll probably get a more authentic feel with your site by manually translating your site, and be able to use local common slang, it will take a lot longer to translate your website, especially if you have a lot of content. The benefit is the quality of the translated content, versus something generated by a machine.
Sure, Google Translate is nice and does well, but there are still issues like accurate translation for nouns and verbs that may either be too formal or informal, depending on your website’s intentions.
Automatic translator plugins may appeal to saving you time, but it could hurt you if the quality is poor.
Best WordPress Multilingual Plugins
Below are some of the best WordPress multilingual plugins out there. Most of these have a free version, but not all of them.
GTranslate
TranslatePress
Polylang
WPML
Google Website Translator
Weglot Translate










