Best WordPress Multilingual Plugins

WordPress has become one of the most popular open source Content Management Systems, and now powers and supports more than 23% of the world’s websites.

Since WordPress is so widely used all over the world, there is an inherent need for site content to be displayed in different languages. Now with eCommerce sites also being constructed with WordPress, it is quite important to make one single site with multiple language compatibility. This can make the sites usable for people who speak different languages. Multilingual plugins from WordPress are developed for this very purpose.

Some of the best WordPress multilingual plugins and their features are listed here:

WPML is the most popular multilingual plugin for WordPress, installed on over a million sites. It supports 65 pre-configured languages, plus you can add custom languages and variants. It makes one single WordPress installation work fully as a multilingual site.

Features of WPML:

• Machine translation powered by DeepL, Google, or Microsoft: Allows you to translate your whole site automatically and review the translations before publishing.
• Flexible translation management: Choose from automatic translation, translating yourself, sending content to translators, or connecting with one of the dozens of professional partner translation services.
• Translate every part of your site: Pages, posts, custom post types, menus, taxonomy, images, and even your site’s admin.
• Theme and plugin text translation: WPML’s String Translation will translate all texts that are not included in posts, pages and taxonomies (such as widgets).
• Multilingual and multi-currency e-commerce: WPML lets you easily build and run multilingual e-commerce sites and add multiple currencies with the included add-on, WooCommerce Multilingual.
• Optimized for multilingual SEO: Choose how to structure your URLs, and translate page slugs, SEO meta, and titles.

As the highest-rated WordPress multilingual plugin on the WordPress Directory, Weglot is loved and used by thousands. Created to simplify your translation process – the Weglot translation plugin gives you a reliable and easy way to take your website from local to global in minutes. Weglot works by translating, detecting, and displaying the content of your website instantly. Install Weglot, select your required language(s), and watch as Weglot does the hard work for you – you’ll have a multilingual website in less than 5 minutes. Then, use Weglot’s simple interface to manage and edit your translations or order additional manual translations if required. Multilingual SEO is also a big priority with Weglot. Language-specific subdomains, are automatically added hreflang tags and translated metadata to ensure you’re searchable within your new markets. Key benefits include:

• Simple and quick set-up
• Multilingual SEO best practices (including language subdomains & translated metadata)
• Compatibility with any theme and plugin (including WooCommerce)
• Automatic and human translations
• A unique dashboard with an ‘in context editor’, easily edit translations & invite teammates to collaborate on projects
• Expert support: a fully dedicated technical support team at your disposal

TranslatePress is a really easy-to-use WordPress translation plugin that lets you translate your entire site directly from the front end. The interface allows you to translate the entire page at once, including output from shortcodes, forms, and page builders. It also works out of the box with WooCommerce.

TranslatePress’ list of features includes:

• Translate all your website content, directly from the front-end
• Works with ANY theme or plugin (no extra compatibility required)
• Support for both manual and automatic translation (via Google Translate)
• Customizable language switcher
• Support for dynamic (gettext) strings added by WordPress, plugins, and themes
• WooCommerce compatible
• Translation blocks: translate larger blocks of HTML with a single translation, by joining multiple translation strings together
• GPL & self-hosted (built the WordPress way)

The premium version includes the following Pro Add-ons:

• Multiple Languages (for adding as many translation languages as you need)
• Automatic User Language Detection (first-time visitors will be redirected to their preferred language based on browser settings or IP address)
• SEO Pack (for boosting your multilingual ranking, includes Yoast SEO sitemap support)
• Translator Accounts (create translator accounts)
• Navigation Based on Language (helps you configure different menu items for different languages)
• Browse as User Role (helps you navigate and translate your website just like a particular user role would. Useful for dynamic content that appears for particular users)

The Linguise translation plugin is the way to go to translate your WordPress website automatically or using a hybrid method (neural translation + content review).

Read our Linguise review.

They have worked particularly hard to address web agencies that implement translation solutions for their clients. For instance, they’ve got a very quick install process, an instant full translation of your existing and new WordPress content, great international SEO optimization, and the possibility to assign several admin users, managers, and translators to each website.

The main advantages of Linguise are:

• Implementation in 10 minutes max.
• High-quality neural machine translations.
• An algorithm that optimizes translations of inline content (HTML).
• Multilingual SEO requirements to index translated content.
• A management interface for translators and administrators.
• 100% of the translated content is editable from the front end.
• 84 languages available.
• The first month is free up to 400,000 translated words.
• All translated pages are perfectly indexed.
• Installations are performed for free.

This plugin from WordPress is highly recommended by satisfied users. This plugin works perfectly with single sites as well as WordPress multisite, and there is also a Pro version with additional features as you can see below.

Features of the free version of Multilingual Press:

• It uses a customizable widget to link to all sites and you can set up unlimited site relationships in the site manager.
• It offers a Language Manager with 174 editable languages.
• View the translations for each post or page underneath the post editor.
• Show a list of links for all translations on each page in a flexible widget.
• Translate posts, pages, and taxonomy terms like categories or tags.
• Add translation links to any nav menu.
• No lock-in: After deactivation, all sites will still work.

Some of the added features of MultilingualPress Pro:

• Support for custom post types.
• Automatically redirect to the user’s preferred language version of a post.
• Edit all translations for a post from the original post editor without the need to switch sites.
• Duplicate sites. Use one site as a template for the new site, and copy everything: Posts, attachments, settings for plugins and themes, navigation menus, categories, tags, and custom taxonomies.
• and much more…

Download Multilingual Press

Polylang allows you to create a bilingual or multilingual WordPress site. You write posts, pages and create categories and post tags as usual, and then define the language for each of them.

The translation of a post, whether it is in the default language or not, is optional. Because Polylang does not integrate an automatic or professional translation service, the translation is performed by the site editor.

Here is a quick overview of the features on offer for Polylang:

• You can use as many languages as you want. RTL language scripts are supported. WordPress language packs are automatically downloaded and updated.
• You can translate posts, pages, media, categories, post tags, menus, widgets, etc.
• Custom post types, custom taxonomies, sticky posts and post formats, RSS feeds and all default WordPress widgets are supported.
• The language is either set by the content or by the language code in the URL, or you can use one different subdomain or domain per language.
• Categories, post tags as well as some other metas are automatically copied when adding a new post or page translation.
• A customizable language switcher is provided as a widget or in the nav menu.
• The admin interface is multilingual too and each user can set the WordPress admin language in his/her profile.

Download Polylang

Conclusion

These plugins are quite powerful in handling the language compatibility of the users. All blogs and websites are directly related to these plugins. However, the eCommerce platforms with WordPress will be experiencing the best advantages of these plugins.

And if you’re looking for web hosting services for your websites, check out SiteGround, who provide fully managed WordPress services and have 24/7 multi-lingual support, that includes WP themes and plugin assistance.

UPDATE: This post was updated in June 2023. Some plugins were removed due to not being updated for over a year, while others were added to the list.