Creating a Multilingual WordPress Site Easily
Do you have a WordPress website that you’d like to make available to speakers of foreign languages, but aren’t quite sure how to start? Then look no further, as we’ve prepared a simple, step-by-step guide below teaching you everything you need to know to get your site translated quickly and easily, with no coding required!
And best of all, using the method below, you can translate not only your site’s content, but any text output by your theme, plugins, or WordPress itself. Wondering how it’s possible? Let’s get started:
How to Create a Multilingual WordPress Site
Before we begin, this approach involves installing the ConveyThis Translate plugin. You can do this by either downloading the plugin from the link above, or clicking on Plugins » Add New from your WordPress admin panel, then searching for “conveythis” and clicking the Install button.
Once the plugin is installed, activate it and head to the configuration page from the menu by clicking Settings » ConveyThis.
From here, you can see just how simple the plugin is to setup, with only 3 configuration settings:
API Key
This plugin requires an API key, which you can get simply by registering on the ConveyThis website and confirming your email address. Once you do that, you’ll be sent your API key by email, and it will be listed on your account’s dashboard at all time for future reference. Simply copy that key and paste it into the configuration page.
Source Language
Simply select the language your website’s content is currently in from the dropdown.
Target Languages
Type in the name of whatever additional languages you want your site to be available in. ConveyThis supports over 80 languages currently, but for now select just one—you can always add more later by upgrading from the basic free plan.
Now save your changes and that’s it! The plugin is now configured and active on your site.
Adding Translated Content to Your Site
This is the part where ConveyThis really shines. Simply visit your website and choose the language from the selector at the bottom of the page. You will be redirected and almost instantly your page’s content will be translated into whatever language you’ve chosen by utilizing the power of machine translation. These translations are then cached so that they don’t have to be regenerated on each page load, meaning future visits to that page will yield even faster results.
This method is superior to other plugins, which utilize PO files and manual content translations stored in the WordPress database, as it translates all of the blog’s content, including text from themes, plugins, and so on, which typically all need to be translated separately.
Improving Your Translations
While machine translation provides fast results and ensures all pages on your site are accessible in all languages, as we’ve stressed in the past, machine translation is not perfect. While it’s gradually improving, you’ll still have some errors due to context or any other number of factors.
ConveyThis allows you to edit every translation it generates for your site, allowing you to create a fully-customized, localized version of your site that will look natural to your foreign-language-speaking visitors. To do this, all you need to do (after visiting a page in a selected language, to make sure there are base translations to work from) is visit the My Translations page from your ConveyThis account dashboard; a link is also accessible from the plugin’s settings page. From the My Translations page, you can view each and every segment of text in both the original and translated languages, and edit them to however you see fit.
If you yourself speak another language, or have a friend or professional translator helping you translate your content, this is an ideal approach as it avoids the need of having to export and import files into third-party applications, as everything is handled internally, and new text is added to the page automatically whenever you change your original content!
Still Have Questions?
If you still need help or simply want to learn more about ConveyThis, visit ConveyThis.com and look around (especially the FAQ), or check out the video below:
