4 Best Translation Plugins for WordPress [Compared]

Looking for the best free translate plugin for WordPress? We've found the 4 best language translator WordPress plugins for your WordPress site!

So you finally made up your mind and decided to make your WordPress website multilingual. Kudos to you because now your website will be accessible to a larger number of visitors!

Having a multilingual website matters more than ever now. There are growing online audiences from all over the world - and they would love to use your website!

Of course, there's the handy Google website translator. But there is often something missing from the translations the Google translator creates. This is why we curated a list of the best free WordPress translation plugins.

Although there are no native solutions to translate your WordPress website, there are many plugins that can do the job. Taking a look through the WordPress.org plugin directory might make you feel overwhelmed!

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Therefore, we took four of the best WordPress multilingual plugins in the market and compared them, so you don’t have to! They all have their pros and cons, but it’s up to you to choose the right one for your website.

So, if you’re ready to take your first step into the multilingual world, let’s go!

What do the best WordPress plugins for translation include?

There is probably no single best language translator plugin for WordPress. But there are some common features that you need to look for if you want to have a great multilingual site.

First of all, the best translation plugins for WordPress should integrate with any WordPress theme. That means they won't create conflicts with your core theme elements. For good measure, a translation plugin shouldn't cause problems for other plugins either.

Next, you'll want a translation plugin that can automatically translate text and other elements of your site. Sometimes this requires an integration - like the Formidable Forms WPML translated forms or Polylang integration. Some plugins also offer options to manually translate too.

Finally, a WordPress multilingual plugin should be able to translate a wide range of languages. Oftentimes this is where free and paid versions diverge. Paid versions will usually translate more obscure languages. But if you know your target is speaking that obscure language, it could be worth every penny!

So without further ado, let's look at the top WordPress translation plugins. They'll all have the abovementioned features plus a lot more.

Weglot

Weglot is an effective solution that makes website translation look almost too easy. It starts by automatically detecting all the content on your website — including dynamic content and content from other plugins such as Formidable Forms and WooCommerce. It then provides the first layer of machine translation. And voila! In just minutes, your fully translated WordPress website is ready.

You can then manually edit your translations and even add team members to your project to work together. However, if you prefer a professional translator to do the editing, you can order it directly from Weglot’s Dashboard as well.

A handy feature of Weglot is the Visual Editor, which allows you to make edits in a live preview of your website. This way, you can see precisely how your translated pages will look and adjust them based on the context.

In addition to the translations, Weglot also takes care of your multilingual SEO by translating your metadata and implementing hreflang tags for you. This way, you become searchable in your new markets and rank higher in search engines globally. Weglot also works seamlessly with popular SEO plugins such as Yoast.

Pricing: Free plan for websites with 2000 words or less. Paid plans start at €9.90/month

WPML

You can’t talk about WordPress translation plugins without mentioning WPML. It’s the oldest WordPress translation plugin, and it’s still used by many. It allows you to translate your website's forms, content, themes, and plugins into more than 40 languages.

WPML allows you to add translations and manage multilingual content across your website through a number of interfaces. Or you can also connect your website to third-party translation service providers and get your translations submitted directly to your website.

WPML comes with two licensing plans - multilingual blog and Multilingual CMS. Keep in mind that if you have a WooCommerce store, you need the Multilingual CMS plan. This plan includes features such as page builder support, custom fields, and managing translation teams.

Finally, WPML is an SEO-friendly translation plugin that translates your metadata and gives you control over your URLs.

Pricing: Paid plans start at $29

Polylang

Polylang is another well-known WordPress translation plugin that allows you to make multilingual forms and websites. With this plugin, you will need to translate the content yourself or hire someone to do it for you as it doesn’t provide translations and focuses more on displaying them.

Each translation can have its own URL, or you can choose to use one different subdomain or domain per language. Besides, it allows you to set up SEO friendly URLs and is compatible with WordPress SEO plugins.

Polylang also adds a front-end language switcher to your WordPress website, either as a widget or in the menu bar. This way, your visitors can easily switch between languages of their preference.

Pricing: Free limited version. Pro version starting from €99

GTranslate

Last but not least, GTranslate is a translation plugin that offers both a free and premium version of its service. The free version provides automatic machine translations in over 90 languages and supports WooCommerce shop translations.

You also have the option of manually editing your machine translations to ensure all translations read correctly. However, the free version is not multilingual SEO-friendly because the translations aren’t indexable. By getting the premium version, you can access additional features such as multilingual SEO, subdirectory, and subdomain URL structures.

You can also add a language-switcher widget to your website so that your international visitors can select their language of choice.

Pricing: Free version and paid plans starting from $7.99/month

What's the best WordPress translation plugin?

If you're looking for fast translation options with machine-generated strings, Weglot and GTranslate are great options. Polylang will give you the tools to translate the strings on your site manually for free.

There are a couple of honorable mentions worth exploring too. Namely, Loco Translate and TranslatePress are a couple of newer translation plugins to test out if the above options don't work for you.

That's about it! We hope you've enjoyed today's post. Please stop by the Formidable Forms blog for more WordPress tips and tricks. Bye for now!