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How to Translate a WordPress Website and Reach a Global Audience

Ready to go global with your WordPress site? Find out how to translate your website into multiple languages, attract international visitors, and increase your online visibility and conversions.

Visitors who don’t understand the language on your WordPress site will probably leave, no matter how great your products or services are. This language barrier can make you miss out on opportunities to connect with and engage your audience effectively.

eye-opening Numbers about Websites and Languages

72.1%

Spend most or all of their time on websites in their own language

72.4%

More likely to purchase a product with information in their language

56.2%

Consider the website language more important than product price

These statistics aren’t just numbers – they’re a clear message that people worldwide want to connect in their own language.

The internet is increasingly multilingual, and this isn’t limited to big brands or e-commerce giants. It’s about you and the unique content you bring to the table. 

With the right tools and approach, your WordPress site can welcome visitors from every corner of the globe.

A WordPress Website in English

A WordPress Website Translated into Catalan

Is it Really Worth Translating Your WordPress Site?

Did you know that of the 5 billion people online today, only a quarter (26%) understand English? 

This fact alone should motivate you to make your content available in multiple languages. And if you consider the popularity of WordPress around the world, it makes even more sense:

  • 5 billion people use the internet
  • Only 26% of them know English well
  • WordPress powers around 43% of all websites
  • Half of the WordPress sites are in languages other than English

The numbers speak for themselves. Making your WordPress site multilingual is a smart move that can bring you closer to more people than you ever imagined. 

Boosting Your Site’s Visibility with Multilingual SEO

As your site becomes accessible in multiple languages, it climbs search engine rankings, making it easier for international audiences to discover you. Multilingual SEO not only increases your site’s visibility but also significantly boosts traffic.

Enhancing Engagement and Conversion Rates

According to CSA Research, 65% of consumers prefer content in their language, even if it’s poorly translated. Interestingly, over 66% of users turn to online machine translations to understand content. This shows that people engage more deeply with websites in their own language. 

By meeting this demand directly on your site, you offer a smoother, more engaging user experience, leading to better conversion rates, whether that’s more sales, subscriptions, and interactions.

Going Multilingual, The Easy Way

Translating your WordPress site into multiple languages might seem daunting and expensive – but it doesn’t have to be. 

It’s true that professional translators ensure your content’s quality and cultural relevance, but their services are costly. On the other hand, copy-pasting online machine translations from Google Translate can be time-consuming and lead to errors.

When you enter a new market, the last thing you want is to become known for an embarrassing translation mistake. A real example involves the American fast-food giant, KFC, and their debut in the Chinese market. Their famous slogan “Finger-lickin’ good” was translated as “Eat your fingers off”. Far from delicious, right?

The good news is that WordPress translation plugins offer the perfect balance. They work within your WordPress dashboard, making them easy to manage even if you’re not a tech expert. Plus, they offer a lot of control over translating, including choices for automatic translation, manual translation, and connecting with professional translators and reviewers.

Introducing WPML, the Leading WordPress Multilingual Plugin

When it comes to translating your WordPress site, WPML is your go-to solution. It makes going global with your WordPress site simple and affordable.

With this powerful plugin, you’re in control. You can translate your WordPress site accurately and quickly at almost no cost using automatic translation.

If you’re aiming for a personal touch or dealing with complex content, you can hire a reviewer or translator to refine the translations and give you assurance.

Seeing is Believing: The Impact of WPML on Websites Across the Globe

Reading about WPML’s features is one thing, and seeing them in action is another. 

The diverse sites translated with WPML demonstrate the vast possibilities that open up when you choose this multilingual plugin.

How to Start Translating Your WordPress Site: A Quick Guide

With WPML, you’re just a few steps away from making your website multilingual.

Step 1: Go Through the Easy-to-Follow Setup Wizard

After you install and activate WPML on your WordPress website, the setup wizard guides you through some simple steps. These include choosing the languages you want to translate it into.

WPML comes with 65 pre-configured languages and allows you to add custom or country-specific languages, like British English or Mexican Spanish.

Choosing the languages you want to translate your site into in the WPML setup wizard

Step 2: Add a Language Switcher

A language switcher allows visitors to choose their preferred language on your website. It’s an essential feature for multilingual sites, providing a simple way for users to switch between languages. By default, WPML adds a language switcher to your site’s footer.

From the WPML → Languages page, you have the flexibility to customize how and where the language switcher appears on your site. This includes adding the language switcher to your site’s navigation menu and placing a language switcher widget in your site’s sidebar or any widget-ready area.

An example of a language switcher added to a site’s navigation menu

If you want to integrate the language switcher directly into posts, pages, page templates, or template parts, WPML also offers a Language Switcher block. This option gives you the ultimate control over the switcher’s placement and appearance, ensuring it fits perfectly with your site’s design.

Adding the language switcher block to a page

Step 3: Translate Your WordPress Content

WPML simplifies the translation process by letting you send posts, pages, custom post types, and other content for translation via the Translation Management Dashboard. This is WPML’s central hub for managing all your translation tasks.

  1. Go to WPML → Translation Management. Select the posts, pages, custom post types, and other items you wish to translate.
  2. Choose the languages into which you want to translate your selected items.
  3. Select how you would like to translate the content and click the Start translating button. You can translate automatically (recommended) or assign the translation task to a translator (yourself or others).
Sending content for automatic translation from Translation Management

For example, we chose to go with automatic translation. This means WPML quickly got to work and translated our content within minutes. If you go for automatic translation as we did, you’ll see updates showing the progress and status of your automatic translations at the top of the Translation Management page. 

While automatic translation offers high-quality results, reviewing the translations can enhance their quality further. With WPML, you have the option to do these reviews yourself or to enlist the help of a professional translator for even greater accuracy. As you can see in the example below, the Translation Management dashboard conveniently alerts you to any translations awaiting your review.

Keeping track of the automatic translation status and translations waiting for review

And just like that, your main website content is now available in multiple languages!

A page in English, the Default Language

The Same Page Translated into Catalan

The Same Page Translated into Norwegian

Step 4: Manage Your Translations

Updating or adjusting your content is a normal part of website management, so there’s no need to worry if you need to make changes.

WPML assists you in monitoring the status of your translations by displaying various icons next to your content. These icons serve as a quick reference to understand the status of each piece of content, making it easier to manage your multilingual site.

Additionally, WPML’s Translation Management section includes a filter feature. This allows you to sort the translation management table by different translation statuses, helping you quickly identify what needs to be translated, updated, or reviewed.

Using the translation statuses filter in Translation Management

Bonus Step: Unlock Higher Translation Quality with WPML’s Glossary

WPML not only simplifies making your website multilingual but also ensures the quality of your translations with its glossary feature. This valuable tool can make your site’s automatic translations more accurate.

You can add terms to your glossary at any point, before or after translating content. These terms might include words, phrases, or names that are prone to multiple interpretations, ambiguous words, or simply words you wish to be translated in a particular way.

An example of a glossary created with WPML

Once added, these terms guide machine translation engines, enhancing the overall quality of your automatic translations. When using the DeepL translation engine, the process goes a step further. DeepL employs artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure that glossary terms are not only translated correctly but also respect correct grammar and sentence structure.

Reach Global Markets with Your WooCommerce Store

And if you’re running a WooCommerce store, it doesn’t need to be limited to local markets – it has the potential to connect with customers across the globe. 

With WPML’s WooCommerce Multilingual & Multicurrency, you can translate every element of your online store, including your products, categories, and Checkout page. And, you can offer your products in different currencies, depending on where your visitors are based or the language they speak. 

A beautifully designed and fully translated WooCommerce store

Enhance Your Multilingual WordPress Site with Compatible Plugins and Tools

Every WordPress site, regardless of its size, needs extra features to enhance its functionality and reach. 

Common additions include SEO plugins to improve your site’s visibility, page builders for easier design and layout customization, and contact forms to connect with your audience. To further captivate your audience, sliders and galleries offer dynamic ways to showcase your content. 

WPML’s compatibility with many WordPress plugins and themes allows you to add new functionalities to your site without compatibility concerns. Our team tests and updates WPML before every major WordPress release and works closely with theme and plugin authors to ensure stability. 

So when WPML updates come out, you can rest assured that they’re safe to use and won’t break your site.

Unlock New Opportunities and Go Multilingual with WPML

Expanding your website’s audience through translation isn’t just about reaching more people. It’s also about connecting with them in a way that respects their language and culture. WPML stands out as a powerful tool that makes it easy for WordPress site owners like you to go multilingual.

For guidance every step of the way, you can dive into our resources, including comprehensive documentation, and our support forum.

With a 30-day money-back guarantee and free automatic translation credits with our Multilingual CMS and Multilingual Agency accounts, starting your multilingual journey is risk-free and straightforward.

Ready to expand your reach?

Join others who have grown their audience worldwide with WPML.