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How to Translate Your WordPress Website in 2024

Learn how to translate your WordPress website into more languages and build a multilingual site. 

Translating your website can help you rank in other languages, build trust among your readers, and communicate ideas more clearly. Whether you want to increase your traffic, conversions, or engagement, translating your site is a great method for achieving all three.

Choose a Multilingual WordPress Plugin

The easiest way to translate your WordPress website is using a multilingual plugin, like WPML. Among WordPress users, WPML is the most popular multilingual plugin, with over 1,000,000+ active installations. 

In addition to translating your content, WPML also includes:

Automatic Translation

Translate your website with machine translation

Multilingual SEO

Optimize translated content to rank higher on Google

Unlimited Languages

Translate your website into as many languages as you want

1. Setup WPML

WPML comes with a short setup wizard to help you configure the basic settings.

Configuring settings in WPML setup wizard
Configuring settings in WPML setup wizard

During the setup wizard, you can choose: 

What languages to add

Choose from over 65 pre-configured languages, or add your own custom languages. 

How to format URLs

Organize translations under subdomains, subfolders, or different domains per language.

Who will translate

Manage translations by yourself, with other users on your site, or with external translators

2. Translate Your Website

With WPML, you can translate any element on your website. This includes: 

  • Pages
  • Posts
  • Custom posts
  • Taxonomies
  • Forms
  • Widgets
  • Products

To translate any element with WPML, go to WPML Translation Management and select the content you want to translate.

Selecting homepage in Translation Management
Selecting homepage in Translation Management

Next, select your translation method. WPML offers various ways to translate your content, including manually (by yourself) and automatically (machine translation).

WPML currently supports four machine translation engines:

WPML AI
Most accurate

DeepL
Most customizable

Google Translate
Most languages

Microsoft Azure
Most affordable

To achieve the highest translation quality, we recommend WPML AI, our better than human translation model powered by ChatGPT. 

3. Review and Publish

Before publishing translations, WPML lets you preview how they look on the front end. 

Previewing homepage translations on the front-end editor
Previewing homepage translations on the front-end editor

If you’re satisfied with translations, you can publish them to your site. If you want to make changes, you can edit translations using the Advanced Translation Editor.

Editing homepage translations in the Advanced Translation Editor
Editing homepage translations in the Advanced Translation Editor

Once you publish translations, they will appear on the front end of your website. 

Homepage in English
Homepage in English
Homepage in Spanish
Homepage in Spanish

4. Add a Language Switcher

To help your website visitors change to their preferred language, WPML lets you add a language switcher to your website. You can add your switcher in multiple locations on your site, including: 

Menus

Widgets

Templates

Post content

By default, WPML provides a basic design for each language switcher. However, you can add your own styling to match switchers with your website’s design. This includes customizing flags, setting background color, changing font, and more. 

Enjoy a Smooth Translation Process

WPML has an ongoing collaboration with over 1,000+ plugins and themes, making sure you enjoy a smooth translation process without any compatibility issues. 

Some of our partners include:

Why Translate with WPML?

Since 2011, WPML has helped millions of WordPress users build multilingual websites. As of today, WPML…  

  • Has over 1,000,000+ annual active installations 
  • Is compatible with almost every plugin and theme
  • Automatically translates 18 billions words per year

And if you’re still not sure, see what our existing clients say about us.  

WPML’s features, functionality, consistent updates, and the tremendous amount of behind-the-scenes support set it apart.

James Welch
CIO, Embryo

WPML is a powerful and user-friendly plugin that helps websites translate their WordPress site into multiple languages with ease.

Ben Foster
CEO, SEO Works

WPML has been the most useful plugin by far in our company. Whenever we have a new customer, WPML is our default choice.

Vadim Pavlovich Owner, Coma

Translate WordPress with WPML

Build your multilingual website with the No. 1 WordPress plugin