Translating Your Website With WPML and GTranslate

Having more than one language on your website may be a critical aspect for your business. You might have clients or customers who speak another language other than English and need a way to communicate effectively and correctly. There are a few different ways to translate the content on your website. At PaperStreet, the two common translation applications we use are WPML and GTranslate. 

About WPML

WPML (WordPress Multilingual Plugin), is one of the most popular plugins used for translation on WordPress websites. The application has 60+ languages (including Spanish and French) that are supported with the plugin. It has a ton of features, which include: 

WPML Features

• The plugin has the ability to automatically translate and more importantly manually translate languages on post, pages, custom post types, etc.
• With the ability to control the content for any language selected it ensures the content will be more accurate.
• WPML allows you to edit your urls on your themes. For example if you have a Spanish website, you can use “es” in your URL. For example: www.mysite.com/es/
• It also allows you to translate ecommerce items (WooCommerce), which is a huge help if you are selling products in different countries.

WPML Disadvantages 

• Implementing manual transitions can be very time consuming. 
• The plugin costs $99 for the non-basic version each year.
• You will need to manage the translations over time since it’s not automatic. For example, if you create a new page, you will need to manually translate it in order for it to include that preferred language.

Languages Supported by WPML

• Chinese (Simplified)
• Chinese (Traditional)
• Danish
• Dutch
• English
• French
• German
• Italian
• Japanese
• Russian
• Spanish
• Albanian
• Arabic
• Armenian
• Azerbaijani
• Basque
• Bengali
• Bosnian
• Bulgarian
• Catalan
• Croatian
• Czech
• Esperanto
• Estonian
• Finnish
• Galician
• Greek
• Hebrew
• Hindi
• Hungarian
• Icelandic
• Indonesian
• Irish
• Korean
• Kurdish
• Latvian
• Lithuanian
• Macedonian
• Malay
• Maltese
• Moldavian
• Mongolian
• Nepali
• Norwegian Bokmål
• Persian
• Polish
• Portuguese (Brazil)
• Portuguese (Portugal)
• Punjabi
• Quechua
• Romanian
• Serbian
• Slovak
• Slovenian
• Somali
• Swedish
• Tamil
• Thai
• Turkish
• Ukrainian
• Urdu
• Uzbek
• Vietnamese
• Welsh
• Yiddish
• Zulu

About Gtranslate 

Gtranslate uses Google’s translation service to translate content on your website automatically. It also supports over 60 different languages. GTranslate works with basically any website including WordPress builds. 

In order to edit languages, you will need to adjust the URL slightly in order for the interface to appear. This page goes over the process. Scroll down to section 2 where you can see how easy it is to update the content.

Instead of an entire backend area to edit your content, GTransate has a simple settings area.

URLs with Gtranslate 

You will need to add the translation string to the URL. An example would be paperstreet.com/es?language_edit=1 the key part being the “?language_edit=1”. Once that is entered the website will be editable.

Gtranslate Features 

• GTranslate can identify which browser language the user is using. 
• The setup time is much quicker than WPML. GTranslate can be added within a couple of hours or less.
• Out of the box it provides automatic translations.
• Just like WPML, you can customize the urls for different languages.
• You can edit the content on the live website which makes it very convenient.
• You can add GTranslate for free, however if you wish to edit the translations, that feature comes with the paid version.

Gtranslate Disadvantages

• One of the downsides is the translations are not 100 percent correct. However, recall that the paid version allows you to adjust them as needed.
• The cost is $9.99 a month for one language and $19.99 a month for all languages. 

 GTranslate Languages 

• English
• Arabic
• Bulgarian
• Chinese (Simplified)
• Chinese (Traditional)
• Croatian
• Czech
• Danish
• Dutch
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Greek
• Hindi
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Norwegian
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Romanian
• Russian
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Catalan
• Filipino
• Hebrew
• Indonesian
• Latvian
• Lithuanian
• Serbian
• Slovak
• Slovenian
• Ukrainian
• Vietnamese
• Albanian
• Estonian
• Galician
• Hungarian
• Maltese
• Thai
• Turkish
• Persian
• Afrikaans
• Malay
• Swahili
• Irish
• Welsh
• Belarusian
• Icelandic
• Macedonian
• Yiddish
• Armenian
• Azerbaijani
• Basque
• Georgian
• Haitian Creole
• Urdu
• Bengali
• Bosnian
• Cebuano
• Esperanto
• Gujarati
• Hausa
• Hmong
• Igbo
• Javanese
• Kannada
• Khmer
• Lao
• Latin
• Maori
• Marathi
• Mongolian
• Nepali
• Punjabi
• Somali
• Tamil
• Telugu
• Yoruba
• Zulu
• Myanmar (Burmese)
• Chichewa
• Kazakh
• Malagasy
• Malayalam
• Sinhala
• Sesotho
• Sudanese
• Tajik
• Uzbek
• Amharic
• Corsican
• Hawaiian
• Kurdish (Kurmanji)
• Kyrgyz
• Luxembourgish
• Pashto
• Samoan
• Scottish Gaelic
• Shona
• Sindhi
• Frisian
• Xhosa

So, What’s the Better Choice?

WPML and GTranslate are both great options for having a website with multiple languages. If you are going more for getting things set up quickly and minimal language fixes, GTranslate would be your best option. If you are looking more for a customized site in other languages with better accuracy, WPML would be the route you should go.

 If you have more questions on language translation options, please feel free to contact us.