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WPBeginner» Blog» Plugins» How to Easily Translate Your WordPress with TranslatePress

How to Easily Translate Your WordPress with TranslatePress

Last updated on April 17th, 2019 by Editorial Staff
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How to Easily Translate Your WordPress with TranslatePress

Did you know that you can install and use WordPress in multiple languages? Yes, you can even create a multilingual website with WordPress by translating your content into different languages. In this article, we will show you how to easily translate your WordPress with TranslatePress.

How to translate your WordPress site with TranslatePress

Why Use TranslatePress for Translating a WordPress Website

The best part about WordPress is that it can be used in any language. Most WordPress themes and plugins can also be used and translated into any language as well.

If your business website have a multilingual audience, then it can be very beneficial to translate your content.

You can use machine translations like Google Translate, but these translations are not good and sometimes can be quite misleading.

On the other hand, if you’re using a multilingual WordPress plugin, then you need to create multiple posts which requires switching back and forth between different languages.

TranslatePress is a WordPress translation plugin that helps you solve all these problems.

  • You can translate your website and content using a live editor with the actual preview of each page on your site
  • You can instantly switch languages from the live editor.
  • Translate your theme, content, and plugins easily using the same interface.
  • Use Google Translate for automatic translations and only edit the parts that don’t make sense.

Let’s take a look at how to easily translate your WordPress website with TranslatePress.

Translating WordPress with TranslatePress

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the TranslatePress plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

If you want to translate your website to more than one language, then you will also need to install ‘Extra Languages’ add-on. You can do this from the download addons button under your account on TranslatePress website.

Download addons

After downloading the add-on, you can install and activate it like any other WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » TranslatePress page to configure plugin settings.

Add license

First, you need to switch to the license tab and enter your license key. You can find this information under your account on the TranslatePress website.

After that, you need to switch to the General settings tab to setup other settings.

TranslatePress settings

The first option on the page is to choose the default language of your website, and the languages you want to translate your website into.

Next, you need to choose whether you want to display language names in the native language. The default option is ‘No’ which means language names will be shown in the default language.

The next option is to choose whether you want to display the default language name in the URL as a subdirectory. For example, http://example.com/en/.

The default choice is no which means only the other languages will have the language name in URL as a subdirectory. We recommend leaving this setting as-is for best SEO.

TranslatePress settings

This brings you to the next setting, ‘Force language in custom links’. The default option is ‘Yes’, because that will change custom links for translated languages making the URLs more SEO friendly.

Next, you need to choose whether you want to use Google Translate for automatic translations. The default choice is ‘No’, but you can change that if you would like to use Google Translate.

You will need to provide a Google Translate API key in the next option. You will find a link under the option which will show you instructions on how to get one.

Finally, you will come to the options on how you want to display the language switcher on your website. TranslatePress provides you with three choices.

You can use a shortcode, add switcher to your navigation menu, or display a floating menu. We will show you how to add the language switcher to your website later in this article.

Go ahead and click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.

Translating Your Website Content

To translate your website, you can simply click on the ‘Translate Site’ tab on plugin’s settings page or the button in your WordPress admin bar.

Translate site button

This will open the live translation editor in a new browser tab.

In this live editor, you can click on any text on your website in the right pane and TranslatePress will load it in the left column to translate.

Translating site in TranslatePress

Now click on the language you want to translate the string into and then provide your translation.

After entering the translation, click on the ‘Save Translation’ button on the top and then click on the next button. TranslatePress will automatically load the next string on the page for you to translate.

You can also just click on the drop-down menu below your default language, and it will show you the list of translatable text strings on the page. You can select a string and then provide its translation.

Select and translate strings on a page

You can translate all content on any page. This includes navigation menus, buttons, sidebar widgets, meta text, and more.

You can also visit any page by clicking on the links on the screen and start translating that page.

TranslatePress allows you to instantly start translating any page or post on your site when logged in. Simply click on the ‘Translate Page’ button on the top to enter the live editor.

Start translating any page

Once you have translated a string, the plugin will automatically translate it for you on other places. For example, if you translated a post title, then the post title in your sidebar widgets will be automatically translated.

Adding Language Switcher to Your Website

Language switcher allows your website visitors to select a language when they visit your website. It usually displays the flag of each country to indicate languages available on your site.

TranslatePress allows you to add language switcher by using a shortcode, as a navigation menu item, or as a floating banner. The language switcher can be displayed as flags, language names, or both.

Adding language switcher in WordPress using shortcode

You just need to add [language-switcher] shortcode to posts, pages, or a sidebar widget where you want to display the language switcher.

Shortcode switcher

Adding language switcher to your WordPress navigation menu

Simply go to Appearance » Menus page and click on the ‘Language Switcher’ tab in the left column. Now select the languages you want to display and then click on add to menu button.

Adding language switcher to WordPress navigation menus

You will now see languages added to your WordPress navigation menu. Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Menu’ button to store your changes.

This is how it looked on our test site:

Language switcher in navigation menu

Adding a floating language switcher

Go to plugin’s settings page and scroll down to language switcher section. From here make sure the box next to the ‘Floating language selection’ option is checked.

Floating language switcher

Don’t forget to click on the save changes button to store your settings.

You can now visit your website to see the floating language switcher at the bottom of every page on your website.

Floating language switcher

We hope this article helped you learn how to translate your WordPress site with TranslatePress. You may also want to see our list of the best WordPress plugins for business websites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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23 Comments

Leave a Reply
  1. Lucie Frankova says:
    Jun 18, 2020 at 4:23 am

    Hello Guys,

    I would like to thank you for an amazing article, it is very useful.

    I just translated whole webpage into English and added the language switcher.
    When being logged in as an admin, I am seeing all perfectly (english version, language switchers..
    But if another person looks at the webpage the langugae options are not visible at all. Did I do something wrong? Is there any other step I am missing?

    Thank you for your help in advance.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Jun 18, 2020 at 9:05 am

      For the most common fix, you would want to ensure you clear any and all caching on your site

      Reply
  2. Hugo says:
    Jun 16, 2020 at 6:23 am

    If I have an image with a bit of text on it, can I change it to a French version if I’m creating a French page? Since the text is not editable in the photo, I’d have to create a new French version of the photo.

    I didn’t see any comments on an option of converting images with translate press.

    Thanks in advance.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Jun 16, 2020 at 9:22 am

      You would want to reach out to TranslatePress for their current tools and options available and they would be able to assist.

      Reply
  3. Alvin Malazarte says:
    Mar 1, 2020 at 7:52 pm

    Can i translate link and page titles using this plugin ?

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Mar 2, 2020 at 11:52 am

      You would want to check with the plugin’s support for questions like these, for the moment you should be able to update page titles with the plugin.

      Reply
  4. Jose Aguirre says:
    Aug 7, 2019 at 9:17 pm

    Hi, i need to force a second language (not default language) in my site, how can do that ?

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Aug 8, 2019 at 10:50 am

      It would depend on your specific needs, if the method in this article is not what you want, you could take a look at our multilingual article here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-easily-create-a-multilingual-wordpress-site/

      Reply
  5. ANASTASIA says:
    Jul 20, 2019 at 6:31 am

    What happens if I switch after a while to another translate plugin? would it leave traces, broken URL …?

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Jul 22, 2019 at 12:43 pm

      It would depend on how the urls are structured in each plugin, if you check with the plugin’s support they should be able to let you know if you can recreate the urls you had before.

      Reply
  6. ANASTASIA says:
    Jul 20, 2019 at 5:55 am

    Hi,

    If I use automatic translater can I still edit manually my post before publishing?

    Thanks

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Jul 22, 2019 at 12:46 pm

      Yes, unless there has been a recent change you should be able to edit the post

      Reply
  7. Hassan says:
    Jul 2, 2019 at 6:59 am

    Hi
    I want to translate a website (originally written in Arabic) to English and i have all pages available in the website in English but i do not know how to link the Arabic page to the same page in English

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Jul 2, 2019 at 12:47 pm

      If you’re using TranslatePress you would add the text using the translate site button and going to the page you want translated.

      Reply
  8. Ajay Kumar says:
    Apr 1, 2019 at 8:01 am

    I didn’t understand one thing is that we have to manually translate each and every word? is that the plugin going to work? if I want to translate into Marathi then I have to write each and every word in Marathi? am I right? then what’s the use of this plugin if we only gives the translations>

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Apr 1, 2019 at 1:55 pm

      The plugin does have the option to use Google Translate, the only issue with that is not all automatic translations work well. That is why it allows you to manually edit the content on your site.

      Reply
      • Ajay Kumar says:
        Apr 2, 2019 at 7:44 am

        so, this only allows you to translate manually, there is no automatic translation, am right?

        Reply
        • WPBeginner Support says:
          Apr 2, 2019 at 11:26 am

          The plugin has the option to use automatic translation deals with Google translate

  9. Al Sch says:
    Mar 1, 2019 at 8:56 am

    Hi,

    Question – if I write a new post (in english, the original website language), will the post also appear in english on all the other websites in different languages?
    Thanks!

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Mar 1, 2019 at 10:17 am

      It would depend on if you’re auto-translating or not, by default you would need to translate the post as otherwise it would appear as your default language on the page for other languages

      Reply
      • Al Sch says:
        Mar 1, 2019 at 10:19 am

        I would be translating things myself, but yeah it makes sense, thanks! I just wasn’t sure whether any edits, additions, etc on the english version automatically appear on the other versions.

        Reply
  10. Ivan says:
    Feb 8, 2019 at 4:45 am

    I recommnd to use google translate to translate site becouse the quality of translation is 4 times better! I use my scripts for it.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Feb 8, 2019 at 11:40 am

      Thanks for your input, the plugin has the option to use the Google translate API so users do not need to manually visit the translate page of Google to get those translations.

      Reply

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