WPML 4.5 introduces the Translate Everything mode which takes care of translating your whole site for you automatically. But what does it mean if you’re already using a translation service?
WPML’s Translate Everything Mode
WPML 4.5’s Translate Everything mode marks a whole shift in how you can translate your website. Now, you can focus on writing the content in the original language and simply let WPML do all the translation work for you. As you publish new pages and edit existing ones, WPML sends them all for translation in the background.
Translate Everything uses automatic translation so all you have to do is make sure you have enough translation credits and you’re set.
Automatic vs. Human Translation
Automatic translation is better today than it was a few years ago. However, it’s not perfect, and we recommend reviewing it by a person.
And of course, when you need to translate niche-topic content, like medical, legal, or very technical documentation, human translation is the way to go.
What We’re Planning To Do Ourselves
WPML.org uses professional translation. People, who understand our business, have translated every page on our site. We’ve used our own translation service ICanLocalize to translate the most important pages. In the future, we’ll be combining automated translation with manual (professional translation). We’ll stay with human translation for critical content and use automatic translation+review for larger and less critical content.
And we’re already using Translate Everything on our other project’s website, Adelance.com and we’re going to use it on our company site (onthegosystems.com) very soon.
Our Recommendation For Sites Using Translation Services
Existing Sites
If you have an existing site with content translated using a translation service, we suggest keeping this setup. This way, you keep all existing translations on your site. You also keep the translation memory that the service has for your site.
New Sites
If you’re building sites that talk about legal, medical, or other very sensitive stuff, you should stay with professional translation. The cost of translation mistakes will be higher than the cost of the translation.
For general-purpose content, have a look at WPML’s automatic translation and use it with human reviewers. This keeps your costs down while delivering great results (accurate and natural translations).
Visit our Translation Reviewer Directory to find reliable translators for reviewing your translations.
What Are Your Thoughts?
We’ve already started to work on the WPML 4.6 release. One of the things we’d like to further improve is the whole workflow for reviewing automatic translations.
But we really want to hear your thoughts on all of this. Does our recommendation make sense to your own situation? Let us know in the comments what you would need.