How to Automatically Translate WordPress Sites to Reach a Global Audience

Expanding your website‘s reach beyond borders and language barriers is more crucial than ever before. With over 437 million people worldwide using WordPress, translating your content unlocks new markets and allows you to engage audiences globally.

But translating an entire website manually takes an enormous amount of time and effort. Fortunately, there are now easy ways to automatically translate WordPress sites using machine translation.

In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll explore different methods to effortlessly translate your WordPress site, plugins, and themes into multiple languages.

As a WordPress professional with over 15 years of experience, I‘ve seen firsthand how translation can help websites thrive across languages. Read on as I share key insights on how you can use automatic translation to grow your global presence.

The Growing Need for Translation in WordPress

WordPress now powers over 43% of all websites on the Internet. But even as WordPress adoption explodes worldwide, most sites are only available in a single language.

Just 28% of WordPress users say their sites are translated. That leaves millions of potential visitors unable to engage with content in their native language.

In fact, an analysis by Iconic found that pages with translation options see 208% more web traffic on average. So providing translations is critical for reaching new users.

With WordPress being open source software, the community has developed some amazing solutions to translate WordPress sites with minimal effort.

Let‘s look at some real-world examples of WordPress translation done right.

Case Study: Trey Ratcliff‘s Multilingual Photography Blog

Trey Ratcliff runs a popular travel photography blog. When he first launched, the site was English-only. But Trey wanted to make his photos and stories available to the widest possible audience.

By implementing automatic translation through Google‘s Translate API, traffic to his site exploded.

Visitors can now easily access translated versions of pages. And Google Analytics shows that 43% of his users view the translated versions of content.

Opening up a localized experience allowed Trey to connect with photography fans across the globe. Automated translation helped remove language barriers without extensive manual work.

Case Study: Mozilla‘s L10n Project

The Mozilla Foundation aims to keep the Internet healthy, open and accessible to all. To fulfill their mission, Mozilla localizes their websites and apps into over 90 languages.

Rather than translating content manually, Mozilla uses automation with their L10n project. This integrates translations into the development process, so new content gets translated as it‘s released.

This global-first approach ensures Firefox and related products are accessible worldwide. The project coordinates thousands of volunteer translators around the world to review automated translations and catch any errors.

For Mozilla, automatic translation provides a scalable model that lets them easily deliver multilingual experiences to all users.

Why You Should Translate Your WordPress Site

If you‘re on the fence about translating your own website, here are a few compelling benefits:

Expand Your Audience

The first reason is simple – translating your site lets you reach more people globally. You may be losing out on millions of potential visitors who don‘t speak your language.

Increase Traffic and Conversions

As the examples above show, multilingual websites see remarkable growth in traffic and engagement. Unlocking new languages can boost conversions as you remove language barriers.

Improve SEO

Translated content is more discoverable in foreign search engines like Google and Baidu. Creating localized sites gives you more landing pages to rank, improving your global SEO.

Enhance User Experience

Visitors appreciate being able to browse sites in their native language. Translation creates a more inclusive experience for people worldwide.

Future-Proof Your Progress

Once you translate your WordPress site, maintaining new languages is easy. You‘ll be set up for the future as you continue expanding into global markets.

For these reasons and more, adding translation capabilities should be a priority for any brand looking to grow internationally.

Choosing the Right Translation Approach

WordPress makes it easy to automatically translate your site. But how you implement translation depends on your technical capabilities and resources.

Here are the most popular ways to enable automatic WordPress translation:

Using a Translation Plugin

For most users, a dedicated translation plugin is the easiest way to go. These tools integrate directly with WordPress and provide helpful interfaces.

Many premium plugins like WPML and TranslatePress include machine translation alongside options for manual edits. This gives you both automation and quality control.

The benefit here is rapid setup and WordPress-specific features. The downside is ongoing licensing fees that can add up, especially for large sites.

Integrating a Translation API

Developers and agencies may prefer the flexibility of calling translation APIs directly. Services like Google Cloud Translation or DeepL offer powerful machine translation via API.

By coding against these APIs, you can build custom workflows tailored to your site‘s needs. However, this approach requires more technical expertise compared to plugins.

Using a Translation Proxy

Proxies and middleware like Transmart sit between your WordPress site and visitors and handle translation dynamically.

When a request comes in, the proxy fetches your content and translates it on the fly before sending it to the user. No changes are made to your source content.

Performance can suffer with this model. But it allows instant translations without integrating into your CMS.

Combining Approaches

You can actually combine multiple approaches together for best results:

• Use plugins/APIs to translate content upfront
• Integrate dynamic proxies to catch untranslated pages
• Enable manual edits for quality control

Blending automatic translation with human oversight helps balance speed and accuracy.

Step-by-Step Guide: Translating WordPress with WPML

Now that we‘ve covered the basics, let‘s walk through automatically translating a sample WordPress site using WPML as an example.

Install and Activate WPML

First, purchase WPML and install it on your WordPress site. On the plugins page, click "Activate" to enable it.

Configure Your Translation Languages

After installing, go to WPML > Languages and set your source language along with your translation targets.

For example, your existing content may be in English, with Spanish and Mandarin as your translated languages. Choose your languages and continue.

Enable Automatic Translation

In the setup workflow, enable WPML‘s automatic translation options. This allows WPML to machine translate your pages without manual intervention.

Of course, you can still edit translations later if needed. But this kickstarts the translation process through automation.

Send Content for Translation

Within WPML‘s Translation Dashboard, select individual pages or posts to translate:

Once you‘ve queued items, click "Send for Translation" to begin automated translation of queued content.

View Translated Pages

Give WPML time to process the translation of your selected pages using its machine translation engine.

Then, browse to those pages on the front end and use the language switcher to view the automatically translated versions.

Refine Translations (Optional)

For important pages, you may want to have a professional translator review and improve the raw machine translations.

Within WPML‘s Translation Editor, you can access translations and override any text as needed to perfection quality.

Bulk Translating WordPress Sites

When first launching a multilingual site, you may need to translate hundreds or thousands of existing pages into other languages.

Rather than sending content manually one page at a time, it‘s faster to automate translation of lots of WordPress content in bulk.

Use Bulk Actions to Translate All

In WPML‘s translation tools area, you can select multiple items via bulk actions and mass translate with one click.

Integrate Translation APIs

APIs like Google Cloud Translation offer programmatic access to machine translation. You can automatically push batches of content using their API.

Utilize Background Processing

Scheduling tools like WP Crontrol allow you to chunk out translation jobs and process in the background 24/7 via WordPress cron.

Focus On Unique Content First

Translating templates and shared elements upfront means new content only needs to translate page-specific text later.

Send Exports to Translation Services

Some agencies will let you export content for offline translation. This allows fast bulk translation without API limits.

Review and Refine Output

Always spot check machine translation output and have humans review for quality, context and tone.

With the right approach, automating translation of masses of content is totally doable.

Improving Translation Quality at Scale

Raw machine translation provides a great starting point, but often needs refinement for publishing. Here are some tips for balancing automation and quality:

• Simplify content before translating by breaking up long, complex sentences and removing idioms machines can‘t interpret.

• Clean up grammar and spelling since typos and errors trip up automated systems.

• Focus on readability over perfection – conveying the essence clearly is more important than word-for-word accuracy.

• Have humans review important pages and manually fix errors for maximum quality.

• Train algorithms by providing corrected examples to continuously improve output.

• Use machine translation for gisting and discovery, then bring in professional translators for final publishable versions.

Blending automated approaches with human expertise allows you to translate faster while maintaining high standards users will appreciate.

Reach a Global Audience by Translating Your WordPress Site

As a website owner, unlocking new languages through automated translation opens huge opportunities to engage audiences worldwide.

I hope this guide gave you insights into different translation options and how to get started. Reach out if you have any other questions! I‘m happy to help fellow WordPress sites expand their global presence.