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Introducing: Advanced Translation Editor integration with Google Translate and DeepL

Announcements, Compatibility
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We have heard your feedback and are excited to announce that we are integrating more automatic translation options with the Advanced Translation Editor. Google Translate is now a live option, and we are actively working on a DeepL integration as well.

Google Translate benefits

Compared to the Advanced Translation Editor’s current automatic translation engine, Microsoft Azure, Google offers more language pair options.

For the most part, the translation quality is very similar, though Google and Microsoft may outshine each other in certain language pair combinations. We understand many clients already have a preferred engine in this regard. If you’re not sure which one is best for your language pair, we recommend sending a couple of pages for translation using each engine and reviewing the translations for your preference.

How to switch your automatic translation engine

Before you create a translation job, go to WPML → Translation Management and click the Translation Tools tab. Click Settings and choose the engine from the dropdown menu.

Choosing an automatic translation engine

Some things to note about this feature:

  • If a job has already been created – even if it has not been translated yet – it will use the engine that was selected at the time it was created. Be sure to select the correct engine before creating new translation jobs.
  • At this time, if an engine is selected that does not support your job’s language pairs, it will not fall back to using a different engine. In this case, you will need to change the engine to one that supports your language pairs, then recreate the translation job. We’ll make this fallback happen automatically in the near future.

What’s next

Many of our clients have also requested an integration with DeepL. This integration is a bit more complicated, but rest assured our developers are actively working on it!

DeepL is now available as a way to power your automatic translations! Read more about the latest with WPML and DeepL.

It’s worth noting that Google and DeepL are more expensive to run compared to Microsoft. While the pricing for automatic translation using Microsoft and Google remains the same for clients for now, prices may increase to reflect these higher costs.

Do you have a preferred automatic translation engine? Let us know in the comments below!

45 Responses to “Introducing: Advanced Translation Editor integration with Google Translate and DeepL”

  1. Nice addition! My favourite online translator is DeepL, much better then Google Translate.

    It makes me wonder though why it was decided to select the translation engine when you create the translation job, rather then in the ATE itself, or at least have an option in the ATE to quickly switch engines? If you are not happy with the automatic translations, then it it is quite some extra steps to recreate the job to see the difference. I think it would make much sense to be able to switch in the ATE so you can immediately see the difference. Even better if you could do that for individual sentences.

    Thanks
    JP

    • Thanks for your feedback, JP! This is very helpful. I’ll pass this along to our developer team.

  2. I’m interested to hear about the integration with DeepL. I work with a lot of European languages, German, French, Dutch etc and these have much better automatic translations using DeepL rather than google translate. It is my go to translator for many of the sites I work on. I also agree with what John-Pierre says above about testing translations between the engines. I do this a lot between google translate and DeepL to see the differences and which is working better for a particular topic or sentence. So to be able to easily switch between them would be useful.
    Nicki

  4. As a professional translator using your software to localize websites for my customers, I can’t help but feel a little bit sad of seeing you promoting Google Translate and similar services. Though it may be useful for some content, there is really nothing that beats the advantages of hiring a professional translator to localize your website content. You spend a lot of time and money on building a great website, only to have it ruined by crappy Google Translate content. I never quite understood why companies would not want to invest in hiring a professional native speaker for this purpose.

    • Bart the problem is that a professional translator is the right choice for static long term value content, but if you’ve to translate many temporary contents (like some articles), the investment in a professional translator is not worth the job.

      Good to ear this news from WPML, seeing forward to Deepl integration!

      • Thanks, Matteo! Good insight about static vs. temporary content and the differing translation needs.

    • Hi Bart – Thanks for this comment. I understand, and I agree that professional translations don’t compare to machine translations. It’s why WPML partners with dozens of translation partners to make it easy for clients to get top-notch professional translations. We also like to offer another solution for cases where a client’s budget or timeline might not allow for professional translation, or if they’re translating the site themselves and need a quick first draft.

    • Actually, we hire professional translators and have them translate directly in WordPress. They use the automatic translations and proofread and localise many articles this way. It’s like providing your carpenter with a drill. Still need a professional to do the job right!

  5. Hi, I thought with your email that Deep was already an option, but I see that it’s not the case, so hopefully it will come soon because for now I’m doing handy copy/paste translation between Deep and Wp and it would be a nice feature to make it automatic.
    Thanks

    • Hi Marko – our developers are still working on it (it’s a bit more complicated than integrating Google Translate). We’ll let you know!

  8. I am on the latest WPML, however there is no translation tools tab for me in Translation Management, did I miss anything?

  9. This is good news, waiting for DeepL since day one. I cannot wait longer to address another even more important topic (mentioned a couple days ago @ https://wpml.org/announcements/2020/08/wpml-4-4-beta-big-usability-improvements-for-string-translation/#comment-3507727 but has its best place on this post) depending on the website usage, especially for eCommerce sites :

    “Allow auto-translation on post publishing”.
    > When a post is updated, it should do one of those actions :
    a) re-translate every new content
    b) open a popup to ask what to do

    For those who read this, please add your +1 as comment.
    If there is any place to vote more officially for this feature, let us know please to take action.

    • Hi Thibault – Thanks for your comment. As Andrea mentioned on the other post, this is a feature we’re considering for the future. We’ll keep you updated!

  10. Google is wasted time cause the translations are worth for spanish.
    Deepl is in some but not all cases better.
    Waiting for integrations of deepl…

  11. I have WPML installed on 2 websites (licensed up to 3 websites). The “Setting” submenu of “Translation Tools” does not appear on one of the installed plugins. What should be done?

  12. When will you implement direct integration with Google Translation API?

    You can’t resell Google Translation API according to their license, so your current implementation is not legal.

    Please make direct integration, so our translation requests will go from our WPML installations directly to the Translation API rather than to your API.

    • Thank you for your comment. WPML’s Advanced Translation Editor includes a number of features, one of which is automatic translation. We do not directly resell Google’s translation API.

  13. dear WPML,

    thanks this is great, except… We cannot use the Advanced Translation editor at all because it does not offer any possibilities for translating shortcodes. We need this because we need different shortcodes for various inserts, e.g. graphs for which the axes and titles have to be translated.

    Do you have any plan to offer shortcode translation in the Advanced Translation Editor in the future?

    best,

    Rik

  14. The DeepL integration is a great add-on. However it would be desirable if users could use the API subscription (through an API key) that they have purchased from DeepL rather than having to pay additional money to WPML. Having a DeepL subscription allows users to use DeepL for various tools (Trados Studio, Passolo, and more). I do understand that WPML wants to generate revenue with this service, but why not offer this as a paid plugin for users that want to use their existing DeepL subscription!

    Thanks – Martin

    • Hi Martin – Thanks for your suggestion! I have passed along your feedback to our developer team.

  15. Can’t wait to get DeepL! Definitely the best tool.
    And it would be great to be able to nicely play with Deepl pro translation memory, and also use professional translators on top of it (counting words, etc).
    Agnes

  17. Hi Allison Rivers!
    Is there an estimated date for DeepL integration? I realise you might not want to state a date, but is it in the order of 1 or 2 months, or longer?
    Thank you!
    Richard