Last year was pretty difficult, but the new "work from home" and "stay at home" norms increased the need for websites. With it, the need for multilingual sites has grown as well.
Building, translating and running sites gets simpler
In 2020, we saw a big rush to building WordPress sites. Businesses who went into the lockdowns with useful sites did a lot better than businesses with basic or no sites.
As a result, many more people started building WordPress sites. Of course, people who started building sites only a few months ago are less experienced than those who've been doing it for several years.
WPML team is aware of this trend and we're adjusting for it. In 2021, WPML will offer new translation modes and new ways to manage multilingual sites. These changes will make it a lot easier and faster to build, translate and run multilingual sites.
Automatic translation keeps improving and offers new possibilities
It's been over two years since WPML started offering automatic translation, as part of our Advanced Translation Editor. In 2020, we added support for both Google and DeepL, so that clients can choose the engine that best fits their needs and budgets.
In 2021, we're going to continue to improve the way WPML uses automatic translation. We're working on a new workflow for "automatic translation with human review". This workflow will offer the quickest and simplest way to get great translation for low budgets.
Professional translation services still provide superior results to automatic translation. However, since not every site can afford the cost of professional translation, we keep looking for ways to leverage automatic translation.
WordPress consolidates around Gutenberg, while 3rd party page builders continue being very popular
The Gutenberg editor has been around since WordPress 5.0 (almost two years now). During this time, the editor has progressed from something that nobody is willing to use to the default content editor for most sites.
Today, Gutenberg offers rich functionality and enjoys many plugins that add rich design blocks (like our own Toolset Blocks).
In 2021, we expect this trend to continue. More sites will use Gutenberg and Gutenberg-related plugins. WPML makes sure that whatever you build with Gutenberg, you can translate easily.
Alongside the impressive growth in Gutenberg adaptation, leading page builders are still very popular. WPML works with the developers of all leading page builders to make sure that you can translate everything in your sites without having to get a PhD.
What do you see coming? What are you hoping to see?
We are doing our very best to make it easy for you to build the multilingual sites that you need. Leave your comments and tell us how you see things in 2021 and what's pressing you the most.