Website localization involves adapting online content to meet the social and cultural preferences of your target market. This allows you to better engage your readers by connecting with them on a more personal level. And the first step to implementing a localization is to translate your entire website.
In this article, we’ll show you how to translate your entire website in a few easy steps. Before we begin, let’s take a look at the basic options for translating websites.
When it comes to translating your website, there are two main options available to you: human translation and machine translation.
Human translation is when professional human translators translate webpages from one language to another. Many agencies provide human translation services in exchange for a fee.
The key benefit of human translation is that it takes the context, structure, and language nuances into account. In addition to this, human translation typically involves procedures like proofreading and quality assurance.
Machine translation, also called automated translation, translates the content on a page from one language to another using artificial intelligence. Google Translate, for example, uses a neural machine translation system to convert text on a page into other languages.
Unlike human translation, machine translation doesn’t take context or language nuances into account which often leads to inaccurate translations.
You’re probably most familiar with Google Translate as an option for translating the whole of your website. It lets you translate your entire website into different languages in a few simple steps:
You should be able to view the translated version of your website from the native language (e.g. English) into a foreign language and the Translate toolbar on the top lets you quickly change the translation language using the dropdown menu.
However, you may notice that some words and phrases stay untranslated. This happens because Google Translate only translates the actual text on a webpage and ignores any text that appears in an image. The same goes for Google Chrome’s automatic Translate option.
While Google Translate offers a simple and quick way to translate your entire website, it’s not an ideal solution for several reasons. The website translations you get with Google Translate aren’t accurate and the service doesn’t offer any support. In addition to this, Google Translate doesn’t offer human translation.
The good news is that there are other ways to translate your entire website without any of the issues that Google Translate has. Weglot, for example, offers both machine and human translations and comes with support.
Weglot is a complete multilingual solution that lets you automatically translate your entire website into over 100 languages. It uses a combination of Google, Microsoft, and DeepL translation services depending on the language pair – to deliver the most accurate results.
The Weglot translation solution offers a mix of both human and machine translation. It translates your entire website content using machine translation and then lets you manually edit the automated translations using its in-context editor or translations list – depending on your preference.
In summary, Weglot provides:
As the most popular CMS out there, we’ll show you how to translate your entire WordPress website using Weglot.
But, if you’ve used a different CMS or built your site without the help of a CMS you can check out all our integrations here. All our integrations have been created so literally, anyone can add multilingual capabilities to their website – there’s no need for the help of a developer.
Search for the Weglot Translate plugin and install and activate it to your WordPress website.
If you haven’t done so already, create a new Weglot account. You’ll need to enter your email address and create a password. Once this is done, you’ll receive a confirmation email to verify your account and get your API key.
Go to the Weglot menu item from the WordPress dashboard sidebar menu.
From the same screen, you can configure additional options for language switcher widget style and location based on your preferences.
Additionally, you can also choose to exclude certain pages from being translated or choose to enable auto-detection of visitors’ language based on their web browser settings.
Click the Save button to continue. When you preview your website’s front-end, you’ll see the language switcher widget that lets visitors translate your entire website at the click of a button.
Weglot automatically generates the first round of machine translation for your entire website. However, you can edit and manage the language translations using Weglot’s built-in editing interfaces.
The Visual Editor offers a live preview of your WordPress website. This allows you to modify your translations as you view them on the webpage while keeping in mind the context and design.
You can edit translations by clicking on the blue pencil icon. This will open a pop-up window that lets you edit the translation.
The Translations List editor provides a side-by-side view of your original content along with machine-generated translations for the chosen language. Any changes made to the translations are automatically saved.
The search bar on the top allows you to quickly find translations and content you would like to modify. You can also click on the Translation options button to set up rules for your translations.
It’s also worth mentioning that Weglot helps you connect with professional translation agencies directly from within the web app as an add-on service. Simply select the pages you want to have professionally translated to get started.
Localizing your website for different target audiences is a great way to expand into new markets and boost sales. For this, you’ll need a user-friendly translation tool like Weglot that lets you translate your entire website into different target languages.
