Translate Your WordPress Site
Are you trying to translate your WordPress site in multiple languages but are not sure where to start? This piece will explore how you can easily create and manage a multilingual WordPress site using Translation Exchange.
If you have a multilingual client base or you are looking to win clients in other parts of the world, then you understand the importance of being able to reach them and speak to them with content that is in their native language. If you still need some convincing, check out some of these stats.
If you’ve had the chance to browse some of the Plugins that WordPress offers for translating your site, then you are probably familiar with WPML and Polylang. Both are great solutions to get you started and they aim to close some of the gaps in WordPress as a content management system.
If you want to learn more about the differences between the two, we are going to have a comprehensive piece coming out shortly that will detail what each one of them has to offer, but in the meantime, you can check out this great post here.
Essentially, what WPML and Polylang do is allow you to store translated copy of your posts or content and then gives you a mechanism for serving up that content in the language that you want.
For example, if you want all the content on your site in Spanish, as well as English, you would find a translator to manually translate all your English content to Spanish. The Spanish content would then be stored in WordPress as a separate post or page and served to the visitors of your site that read that language.
Now, if you have a super simple site, and not much content that needs to be translated, using WPML and Polylang are good options. If you have an inhouse translator or you plan on translating the content yourself, then you’re probably good to go.
But if you have a site that you will be continually adding content to, or looking to translate into more than one language, then you’re going to want to think about extending the functionality of WPML or Polylang with a Translation Management System like Translation Exchange. For several reasons.
Benefits of a Translation Management System
1. You’re going to need to access to translators. So unless you have the time to evaluate multiple translation agencies, you’ll want to rely on the translation market place that Translation Exchange has put together –where you can order translations for your content, on demand, in any language pairing you can think of.
There are numerous benefits to having access to a marketplace of translators. First, you can request quotes for your translation projects and have multiple translation agencies bid for your business, ensuring that you get the most competitive price. Second, all the pricing and progress of your project is in real time and transparent, you’ll know exactly how much you’re paying for the translations ahead of time and with a dashboard, you can track the translation project in real time. Lastly, because the translators on our marketplace are experts in using Translation Exchange, you can rest assured that the accuracy and context of your translations is correct.
2. You’ll want a translation memory. One of the things that you don’t get with a Polylang or WPML is a translation memory database of all of your previous translated content. Why is this important? Because once you pay to have something translated once, you shouldn’t have to pay to have it translated twice! That’s the benefit of having translation memory. Translators and language service providers rely on them with their clients and you should too!
The neat thing about using Translation Exchange with WordPress, and our plugin, is that when you go to post a new piece of content to your site, Translation Exchange will automatically locate all of the words or strings that have been previously translated and stored in your translation memory and automatically update the translations for you.
3. Automation. One of the most difficult aspects of translating ongoing content is the actual process that’s involved with downloading text, translating it, re-uploading it to your CMS, making sure the formatting is correct (how does the page look with German vs French for example), correcting mistakes and contextual errors, etc.
As you can imagine, there is a significant amount of back and forth that takes place with the traditional translation process.
With a Translation Management System like Translation Exchange, you can plug into WordPress, and WPML/Polylang if you’re using one of them too, and never again have to worry about how the page is going to look, or emailing files back and forth –everything is handled and automated in one system –giving you back precious time to focus on growing your business and other strategic initiatives.
Laying the foundation
With a Translation Management System for your WordPress site, you will also be laying the foundation for your future localization efforts.
One of the great benefits of having a Translation Management System like Translation Exchange is that you can extend your localization efforts to other areas of your business like email marketing and customer support.
The natural evolution of the localization process that we’ve seen, after companies translate their WordPress site or mobile app, is to begin to market to and support their existing client base in their native language.
What this means for you, if you’re in charge of the localization process, is making sure that you have a translation management system that supports all of your localization needs.
For example, say that you are using MailChimp for your email marketing campaigns but your email templates that you use are all in English. But you also now have a growing customer base that speaks a language other than English because you’ve translated your WordPress site. With the right translation system, you can easily push the templates that you have in MailChimp to your TMS, easily order the translations, then push the translated email templates back to MailChimp and begin your campaign.
You can watch this quick video on how to translate your email marketing campaigns with Translation Exchange and MailChimp.
The same process that we use with MailChimp applies to other facets of your business as well, like translating your help desk or support tickets. But that’s for another post so be sure to check back in the coming weeks as we will be walking through the process of how to translate your content in Zendesk or Desk.com.
Bottom line
Translating your WordPress site is not as scary as it might seem. There are numerous tools to help you get started and easy plugins that make the process seamless.
Check out the WordPress plugin we have if you want to give Translation Exchange a try and we have further documentation here and here that will help you get started.