With the increasing business opportunities and the internet world becoming one huge platform many sites feel the need for language translations.
There are certain things or certain products that make an appeal to the visitors only when they are presented in a language which is their own.
Now the risk of doing this is losing the meaning in the process. The requirement is still increasing and it is due to the availability of various effective support systems.
The ease of setting up a language translate on your page and a surety that efforts will be made to keep the meaning and accuracy intact is what the website owners require.
If you are also looking for options to easily create a multilingual WordPress website then the article will help you in the process. You will not be required to establish spate WordPress install for the languages you want.
The whole page will be translated easily, this translate will include the posts, tags, categories, themes etc to the language that you select. There are of course many languages to choose from. Multilingual website is also good for SEO.
Now every website owner has two options, one is to manually translate the content using a language expert and offer the service to the readers and the second method is to use a machine translator for the existing content.
The translation not manual is done by Google translate service. There is no doubt that manual translation is a better option for translating the content. This option allows the quality to be intact.
The content can be translated by self but for different languages, it is best to hire experts. The website owners who do not have this manual translation option and still want to provide translation service to their visitors can opt for Google translation. The Google translator adds a multi-language switch for the users.
When the visitors come to the site they are offered with a translate option mostly when they are reading a content not common to their region and searches.
The drop-down menu will allow the visitor to choose the language and the whole page will be translated. As stated the quality of this service will not be as good as the other option.
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How to Add Multilingual WordPress Website for Human Translations
The plug-in called Polylang will be useful. The WordPress users will have to download the plug-in and install it on the website.
The plug-in once activated like any other plug-in is now available for function. Go to the settings page and select language for configuration. There are three tabs at things page.
First is labeled languages- you can add the language you want for translation here. The page will require a default language as well as the other translated languages.
After adding the next is the strings translations tab where you will have to add the title, description and choose the date and time format. The last step of configuration is the settings tab where you can choose the default language and other technology options that you want.
Polylang makes the job of translation easy. The users will have to first add the content in the default language which will be selected.
The post edit screen will have the language meta box. The content can be translated into other languages by clicking on the plus button which s next to the default language and you will have to repeat this process for every language that you choose. Once completed publishing the posts and pages.
While using Polylang you can translate the tags and categories as well which is important as the visitors will only be able to get to the content if they are able to understand the categories right.
You can do this by going to posts and then categories there you can choose the default language and then the plus icon next to it to add languages and the translation thereof.
It is a must that you must have a widget on the site to show the visitors and make it easy for them to translate the page. You can go to appearance and then widgets and add the language widget to the sidebar of the page.
There could be a drop-down menu or a language name flags on it to allow the visitors to choose the language they desire. Now you can save all the changes and settings you have made to ensure that the page is ready with the language translations.
It is best that the site before going live is previewed and tested for the languages. The users will find it relevant only when the site is effectively translated.
Using Google Translate to Create a Multilingual WordPress Website
The human translation needs resources and time, it is, of course, considered a better way of translation but when you have some limitations and still want to provide the visitors with language options then the other good option is the use of Google translate.
It automatically does the same work for your site content but some meaning is risked to be lost during the translation.
To start off you will be required to install and then activate the Google language Translator plug-in. Now once it is active go to the Settings page and then on Google language translation to configure this plug-in.
There are a lot of languages available with Google and this plug-in allows you to choose the language that you want to use.
You even have a choice to remove the Google brand from the translation. There are a lot of settings available with this plug-in the users are free to explore the plug-in and use any features to their liking.
The website theme that you use should be translation ready for the whole process to work effectively. If you are thinking about getting a great website then you must take active steps right from the start.
The website should have the quality of the content to suit the wide audience reach as language translation will allow a lot of visitors from all over the world to access the site.
