The world of the web has become a global village. We are now a click away from Russia, Australia, Germany, Israel, Kenya, and the Antarctic.
Learning to work in a virtual global village can be challenging but there are many WordPress Plugins that will help you get your message across, no matter what language you speak or read.
There are two types of WordPress Plugins to help cross the language barriers. Translation Plugins provide instant translations of your post content into other languages. Multilingual Blogging WordPress Plugins allow multi-lingual bloggers to blog in more than one language. You can use one or both types of WordPress Plugins together.
WordPress is set up to allow blogging in dozens of languages without any WordPress Plugins. For more information on blogging in WordPress in your language, see WordPress in Your Language on the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users.
Translation WordPress Plugins
WordPress Plugins that translate your WordPress blog from one language to another help cross the language barrier that often divides us. They also help to clear up the confusion often found trying to communicate in another language when there is an option to translate the post into our native language.
WordPress Global Translator Plugin by Nothing2Hide is one of the most popular translation WordPress Plugins. It is a stand alone WordPress Plugin, which means it doesn’t require any additional files to work. Just activate the Plugin and it puts a small table of international flags in the header of your blog which, when clicked, will translate your blog content into that flag’s language.
Currently, 10 languages are supported, providing cross translation between English, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Arabic.
You can control the placement of the flags within your WordPress Theme. There are many options to controlling how the flags will look and be laid out on your WordPress Theme, too. You can have them in a single row, two rows, etc. However, the flags are stored in a table.
If you are an anti-table user like me, you can change this by editing the Plugin file and replacing the text code for the table with a DIV and adding the style to your stylesheet to layout the flags in whatever structure you would like. Remember to make a note of the change so you can repeat it when you next upgrade the Plugin. Hopefully a table-less layout will soon be available so you won’t have to edit the Plugin.
Angsuman’s Translator Plugin Pro For WordPress Blogs is also popular for translating your WordPress Plugin. It provides provides automatic machine translation of your blog in thirteen different languages - German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Dutch, Swedish, Greek, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean and Chinese.
Translated pages are cached, which means they are stored as “semi-static” pages to speed future loading and cut back on database demands. It is also available as a WordPress Widget. It works with curl (if available) or without curl support (uses fopen).
However, unlike many WordPress Plugins, Angsuman’s Translator Plugin Pro costs USD $30 to download. This includes six months free technical support and free lifetime upgrades. If you are serious about providing dedicated translation options, this is an inexpensive way to open your blog up to the world.
WordPress Translation Plugin by the Indo-European Language Blog offers another translation WordPress Plugin which adds translations from and into most language pairs offered by Google, Altavista and Tranexp. It doesn’t use flags but the names of the language in their language in text links. It’s very simple and easy to use and a great option if you don’t want to use flags to represent the different languages, creating a cleaner look on your blog’s design.
WordPress Translate by Monosyllabic Manifesto is another simple “drop-in” WordPress Plugins which adds a list of 11 language translations, with flags and text, in a horizontal or vertical layout.
GG_Translate WordPress Plugin provides links to translate your blog based on the languages the users has set up in their browser. Does not provide links where the users language is the same as the blog language. It adds an administration page to the plugin that allows users to select translation engine order of preference, base language for the blog, the url format for the translation links, and the maximum number of translation links to display.
Translate WordPress Widget by Trev’s Travels also works with Google to provide translations. It includes a translation flag bar.
Multi-Language Blogging
Many bloggers today speak and write in different languages, and they want their blogs to be bilingual, too. This can mean that all posts in English need to have a French version or it can mean that the blogger can choose which language they want to blog in at any given moment.
It can also mean that the blogger will blog in only one language overall, but may want to occasionally add translations or snippets of other languages to their posts.
Not all language word characters are equal. There are different keyboards for different languages, and different character codes (character entities) for different language characters. Examples include ð, þ, ÿ, û, ñ, é, ¿, ç, æ, ð, ¡, and ø. Going from one language to another can create havoc and a nightmare for those who try to do it manually.
For example, in English, my name is Lorelle. In HTML character entities, is it spelled “lorelle” which actually looks like this under the surface:
lorelle
To see Lorelle spelled in Hebrew, it would be לורל, which looks like:
לורל
How would you like to write in that all day?
WordPress Plugins can help take the pain of character codes out of the process of multilingual blogging.
jLanguage WordPress Plugin helps the browser automatically recognize language characters and converts them. It does not translate, but takes the letters in brackets in the Write Post panel and changes them into the appropriate language character code, allowing the characters to look “right” when viewed by readers.
The Plugin author offers this example of how you would write in the different languages in your WordPress Write Post panel:
[jLanguage default="english"][english]If you want something done right, consider doing it yourself. Unless you are too lazy like me.[/english] [danish]Hvis du skal have noget gjort rigtigt, så overvej at gøre det selv. Medmindre du er for doven ligesom mig.[/danish]
The Plugin would then translate the appropriate character codes for the browser to interpret.
Simular to this is Simple Multilanguage WordPress Plugin by g.olb. Using the [lang][/lang] tag commands, it allows writing in different languages on your WordPress blog with a default “visible” language and a “hidden” one. Currently, it supports five languages.
For serious multilingual bloggers, there are several options which help you manage your WordPress blog in different languages.
Gengo Multi-Lingual Blogger WordPress Plugin, which I reviewed recently, is a WordPress Plugin that works for those who are blogging in more than one language. It’s not a complicated Plugin to use, but it does require some familiarity with WordPress template files and Themes. There is a very helpful Gengo WordPress Plugin Support Forum for when you get into trouble with the Plugin.
Polyglot 2.0 helps to make WordPress bilingual. The successor of Language Picker, it support different time and date formats, permalinks, localization of your WordPress blogs, and different languages for posts and Pages. For some tips on using this on WordPress 2.1, see Making WordPress multilingual.
Plugin YammYamm WordPress Plugin is another multilingual manager for WordPress. It requires some editing of your WordPress Theme template files.
An interesting companion to these multilingual WordPress Plugin managers is getBrowserLanguage. It accesses and returns the user’s browser languages, which would help multi-language WordPress Plugins or help multi-lingual or nationalistic advertising be targeted towards the visitor. There are lots of possibilities for this WordPress Plugin to target international users.
Opening Up to the World With Your WordPress Blog
The more internationally friendly the web becomes, the more international visitors you can expect to see on your blog. WordPress developers are working hard behind the scenes to make WordPress as lingually friendly as possible.
Currently, WordPress supports over 70 different languages with more on the way all the time. For a listing of all the various languages, see WordPress in Your Language and the WordPress Language File Repository. For information on using WordPress in your language, see Installing WordPress in Your Language.
Help is always welcome for translating WordPress and supporting WordPress in your native language. See Translating WordPress for more information on how you can help.
Do you use these translation WordPress Plugins? Or do you blog in different languages? Have these Plugins helped you? What do you recommend? How do you blog in your multilingual blogs?
Related Articles
- WordPress in Your Language
- Website Development - International Standards and Languages
- Translation - How Do You Know Which Language is Which to Translate
- Instantly Translate Your Blog
- Invitation to Hebrew and Arabic bloggers to blog with WordPress.com
- Translate WordPress: WordPress.com Home Pages in Hebrew, Farsi, Bulgarian, and More
- Blogging in More Than One Language
Site Search Tags: wordpress plugin, wordpress plugins, 30 days of wordpress plugins, translation, wordpress translation, translation plugins, translate wordpress, multilingual, multilingual blog, blog in different languages, multi language, multi language blog, wordpress in your language
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network
41 Comments
Hi, thanks for your review about Simple MultiLanguage Plugin, I have to add that my system support infinte languages, the user can edit the file adding/removing languages if he/she likes.
Also the system read the browser default language and shows, if available the that language, otherwise it shows the default one set by the user.
Lorelle, I installed the Global Translator plugin on my blog and got “page not found” errors when I clicked on the various flags. I thought maybe I had missed something and wasn’t sure how the plugin should work, so I checked out “Camera on the Road” so I could see how it works there. When I clicked on a flag in the header, I got a “page not found” error there as well. Any idea what’s going on? (I’ve also posted a query on the author’s site.)
Dan, thanks for bringing this to my attention. I just upgraded so there may be a bug in the Plugin. I’ll also look into this.
Dan and all others having trouble with the Global Translator WordPress Plugin:
I forgot that one of its quirks is that you have to go to your Options > Permalinks panel and click UPDATE. If the .htaccess file is not writable, you have to make it so, but just temporarily, and run the UPDATE. Then the Plugin works.
It’s annoying and I wish there was a way around this, but this is how it works. I haven’t been able to detect any changes or additions it makes to the .htaccess file, but this step must happen in order to make it work.
This applies to first installations and updated.
Wait, what’s that format I heard about that lets you write in the language of your choice? Is that called UTF-8? Is that WordPress’ default encoding?
Hi Lorelle,
There is a question I would like to ask. How the Search Engines analyze these translated pages. I am french. If I write an article in french AND in english, will the search engines will see 2 pages or only my “standard” page, that is the french one ?
Thx for your help and Thx for that article
Fran6
What a great news. I didn’t read all but can you say if this plugin is better than YammYamm ?
Is it really easy to use ?
Thanks
Ramenos: Is which better than YammYamm? Better means it works for you. What works for one person doesn’t work for another. They are free. Give them a try to see which one works best for you and your needs.
Fran6: Search engines will read the different languages and store them appropriately. Are you worried about the issue of duplicate content? As far as I understand, it isn’t considered duplicate content by search engines. Unless you are abusing search engines, don’t worry about it.
Great list of plugins! I found some new ones here that I have not tried.
I have had a lot of frustration with the Global Translator WordPress Plugin. I finally got it to work but only with the fGallery plugin turned off. I just tried your htaccess trick without success. After upgrading to Ella all I get are blank pages. I have tried turning off every single plugin and using the WordPress Default theme, nothing.
Fran6: the cached pages get indexed separately. Be careful with Global Translator WordPress Plugin as its default setting will cache pages on the hour.
Hi guys and thanks for your replies. What would consider to be the best choice for a french/english solution ? For those who already use these kinds of plugins, of course ! Polyglot and YammYamm seemed to be the best…I want to write the articles in english by myself…I mean…with ALL the mistakes I can do in english !!!
I updated my permalinks and got a blank page for the translations. I then deleted my .htaccess file, created a blank one on the server, and updated permalinks again. My .htaccess file changed with some new rules that weren’t there before (which was good), but I still get a blank page instead of a translation. I had thought that it might be a problem with my theme (heavily modified K2), but Skarld’s experience makes me think that’s not the issue.
Why not try Translator instead. It is basically the same concept. I’ve got it working on a couple of my sites.
Hola,
I am trying to get the WP Global Translator Plugin to work from Spanish to English and I am having tough luck. Does anyone know where support forums are?
elle.
Always check the Plugin author’s blog for answers.
However, this might not help you but it might:
For those having some trouble with the Global Translator WordPress Plugin, a comment in the Plugin page offers a solution for the 404 or blank page problem: Turn off the Gzip function in WordPress. It’s under Options > Reading.
And my motto is: if it don’t work, try one of the other options.
Hi, i’ll notice you that Simple Multilanguage Plugin is closed, and I have start up a brand new project: Babel.
If you are interested in, look this: http://gh3.ellequadro.net/my-works/babel/
It will be released sooner, meanwhile you can see it working on my blog.
Another great post Lorelle.
I came back to this one through your guest spot on ProBlogger.
I’ve just installed the global translator plugin on my creative design blog and it seems to work great. On tiny problem is that the Chinese language doesn’t allow you to click back through the flags. That’s no biggie.
Ciao for now.
Hi Lorelle,
Has anyone talked about the fact that when a user hits say, the Spanish button from English and then hits the German button, that you now have a German machine translation of a Spanish machine translation. The that user clicks Spanish again and now… you can see where I’m going with this.
I guess I trying to think of a way to always force the translation from the original.
Take care,
Scott
Yes, this is a problem. A frustrating one.
Hi Lorelle,
I’ve found this article very useful, thanks allot.
I was looking for an Eng-Heb translator but with no luck. All the translators I found relay on Google or on AltaVista translators - both does not support Hebrew.
Have you by any chance heard of one?
That’s all I’ve found, too. Sorry.
Hi All,
Thanks Lorelle, for writing this about the translator plugins..
I am having the same problem with the global translator plugin though and “page not found” when I click on a flag, I’ve tried all the solutions on here but it still doesnt seem to work. I was wondering if anyone had any other solutions I could try?
Many Thanks
Martin
According to Quick Online Tips, the popular Global Translator WordPress Plugin has been updated, fixing many recent problems. It now uses either or both of the Google Translation or the Babelfish Translation Engines and now has improved caching and the option of DIVs or table layout. If you have the newest version and it still isn’t working, then I recommend you contact the author as they are still active on their Plugin’s development.
Hello Lorelle, great information., Thanx.
I have a question- is this feature is available for free wordpress.com? Thanx again.
Translation is not available for WordPress.com blogs, though it should be. WordPress Plugins cannot be used for WordPress.com blogs. If we can convince them to add it so everyone can use it optionally, then that would be great!
Until then, you can use my poor man’s technique explained in Instantly Translate Your Blog, but it only translates the first page of your blog, not your entire blog or any specific post.
Thank you Lorelle, for your support and kind advice.
Another question. Sorry, new to wordpress so have many questions to ask.
How can I add [E-mail this] link from my free wordpress.com blog. If anyone like my post and want to recommend it to his or her friend then what would be the appropriate way for me to provide this service. Thank you for all your support and answer.
You can manually add such a link, but it’s really not necessary today and an old fashioned way of promoting your blog. People know how to copy and paste links into email. Why clutter your blog?
Just focus on your content and quit playing with gimmicks. The more content, the better the content, the more people will naturally want to share it, write about it, and link to it. Content, content, content. Can gimmicks.
Good blogging!
Hi Lorelle
Bravo, what a great post.
I’ve installed Global Translator Plugin, wow…now my home improvement site can draw more traffic, and boost more confidence for me to post more contents.
Lorelle, you’re great, thx!
Regards,
Vincent
thanks for post, spared me time
Lorelle, I have installed the global translator and am getting the following error:
Fatal error: Call to a member function get_base_url() on a non-object in /global-translator/translator.php on line 178
I have sent several requests to nothing2hide and have not received any response back. Do you have any suggestions or can tell me what the error is talking about?
Thanks,
Lance
I do not provide any technical support for any other author’s WordPress Plugins. I have no familiarity with these other than as a user. Please search and then ask on the WordPress Support Forum.
Hi I used your translator with wordpress. Then I deleted it, but google is still crawling posts with the korean translation. Example: http://www.123.com/ko
There is no korean translation anymore and it shows the english site. So http://www.123.com and http://www.123.com/ko is the same and might be seen as duplicated content?
Where can I delete the /ko thing? Dunno where to look.
@ JB:
The pages were probably cached. Clear the WordPress cache files. And you need to contact the Plugin author.
You should also look at the Worldwide Lexicon (www.worldwidelexicon.org). We make a collaborative translation plugin for Word Press. It enables readers to view, create and edit translations to any languages they speak. It is not machine translation, so if you have readers who speak Farsi who will translate for you, you can be in Farsi. It works with virtually any language pair. WWL, like Word Press, is mostly open source.
I’ve written about this service before. The only thing that continues to bother me is the wiki-effect. I have no control over the translations. It’s lovely to ask others to translate my blog posts, but how do those posts display on my blog? And what if they only translate a few paragraphs and then leave and don’t finish. Not all languages have machine translations available, so how do I know how accurate the translations are if anyone can translate them? There are a lot of questions I have about this, as do many others, so I’d love to know the answers.
I am a bilingual blogger and wasn’t satisfied with what was available for my WordPress Blog.
IMO multilingual blogging isn’t really about translating a post, but talking to different people about different things in different languages.
That’s why I developed blogslot - a simple yet effective wordpress plugin for the multilingual community. I’ll avoid the link to my blog, but feel free to pay me a visit for more information - the plugin is free of course
Very good article Lorelle. Thanks for interesting reading.
There are lots of plugins. I will clone my blog and test them all!
Thanks for the post!
Hi Lorelle, Your website is a great source of reference to me. I would like to find a plug in that would make a translation but then create the page/post on my site so it could be edited later to make the translation more accurate. Do any of the ones you have covered do this?
@ sean greenhalgh:
An “editable” translation can be done manually, or get involved with the Worldwide Lexicon Project which is developing a WordPress Plugin for editable/wiki style translations of blog posts.
Nice content.
Thanks! Help me a lot.
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