But how exactly does it work?

There are plenty of strategies you can implement to improve your local SEO. Many of them take only a few minutes to set up, so there’s no reason not to. Others are more in-depth tactics that will shape your content strategy for the foreseeable future.

To help you out with your localized SEO efforts, we have summarized some important tips here. We’ll talk about what exactly local SEO is, how to implement it, and the role that localized and translated content plays in it.

Local SEO: What It Is and Why It’s Important

Chances are high that you have used the Internet to find information about local businesses before. In fact, the vast majority of people do. In 2022, a whopping 98% of consumers used search engines, directories, and forums to search for local business info.

That already tells you why local SEO is so important. Getting your business to pop up in those results can generate massive amounts of organic traffic, and a solid local SEO strategy could land your storefront in the front and center position for “near me” searches.

With 3/4ths of US consumers searching for businesses once a week or more, and nearly a quarter of them doing so every single day, neglecting to optimize your site for local search queries means you’re losing out on hundreds or thousands of patrons.

If your business crosses international borders, coming up with a local and international SEO strategy becomes even more important.

But here’s the kicker: Local SEO isn’t just about slapping an address on your website and calling it a day. While there are some strategies as easy as filling out a form or installing a plugin, others require a lot of thought and an overhaul of your content marketing strategy.

If you’re ready to take on this challenge, the following local SEO tips will potentially propel you to the top of the listings in your neighborhood.

SEO Tips for Local Success

Before we get into specific strategies, be aware that you don’t have to implement every single tip listed here. If something feels too technical or outside of your skill set, skip it for now and go for a task that feels doable instead. Every little bit helps, so feel free to pick and choose and slowly work your way through the list.

1. Optimize Your Google Business Profile

If there’s only one step you take to improve local SEO, make it this one: setting up a Google Business Profile.

If you’ve searched for businesses with Google before, you’ve definitely seen this feature in action. You probably also know first-hand how helpful it can be to potential customers.

When you search for a business or click on an address in Google Maps, a panel pops up. It contains all important details, such as the business’ phone number, reviews, and opening hours. You can even get instant directions from your current location or visit their website with one click.

While this is primarily helpful for those already looking for information on your business, it can also pop up on generic “near me” searches, which essentially functions as free advertising for your business.

Setting it up is also a straightforward process: just sign in to Google Business Profile and create an account. You’ll be asked for a bunch of information about your business, like its name, physical location if applicable, website, and so on.

You’ll also need to verify that you actually own and operate this business. You may be able to do this by phone or email, or you may actually be required to send a video recording or join a live video call showing off the premises. 

Either way, once you’re verified, you’ll now have a reliable way of generating organic traffic and directing local customers to your business.

2. Use Google Maps

There’s one really small change you can make that can really help your local SEO and conversion rate: adding a Google Maps widget to your website.

With this, anyone who visits your website and is looking for your physical business can easily find it and get directions with a single tap. It can even help your SEO in some ways, by signaling to search engines that your business is legitimate and relevant to local searches.

In case you’re running a business with multiple locations, even international locations, you can also create a store locator using Google Maps.

And thanks to WordPress’ extensibility, it’s super easy to get a map on your website. Plugins like WP Go Maps are perfect for the job.

3. Set Up Local Business Structured Data

Another thing you might have noticed while browsing Google are the rich results. That means search results containing images, star ratings, quick recipe listings, mini restaurant carousels, eCommerce product info, and more.

All this happens thanks to structured data markup, and it’s a great way to make your business stand out in the search results.

Information of this kind is very relevant to local SEO, as potential customers will be interested in learning your business hours or what products you sell quickly. You don’t want to be behind the curve here, so check out Google’s guide on adding structured data to your website.

You can also use a plugin. Schema & Structured Data for WP & AMP makes it simpler to set up structured data on your WordPress site. Many SEO plugins also include the functionality, letting you pick from a list of relevant schema markup for each page.

4. Conduct Localized Keyword Research

You know how important keyword research is for a traditional SEO strategy. Even as search algorithms move away from keyword exact matches and towards prioritizing search intent, doing keyword research can give you a good idea of what users are looking for.

But did you know that you can also see what keywords people use who live near your business? What sort of restaurants they prefer? Where they like to shop?

Local keyword research can answer all of these questions and allow you to target precisely what your actual day-to-day customers are interested in. So, one of the best SEO tips is to find out these local keywords.

Tools like Google Keyword Planner. Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, and SEMRush Keyword Research tools all include functionality for that.

Once you know what keywords matter to your local clientele, you can include them in your website content, meta descriptions, headings, and image alt tags. Most importantly, you can use them to inform your content marketing and satisfy users’ search intent.

5. Create Localized Content

Once you have done local keyword research and have an idea of the kind of topics you should target, the next logical step is creating localized content.

Updating your content strategy and creating tons of new articles may not be easy, but it’s one of those cornerstone tips for a successful local SEO strategy. If you want to succeed, whether you have dozens of locations or a single store, you need to address the interests and concerns of your on-site audience.

What are some annual events that are popular in your area? Could you join in with your business and write posts covering them? What about guides to commonly visited locations around the town or city? Are there any popular interests you might be able to incorporate into your content?

Local keyword research will help you determine what your audience wants to see and establish your business as a trusted resource within the community.

6. Use Local Link Building Strategies

Similar to keyword research, link building is an important general SEO strategy. It’s also one you can leverage for local SEO.

Backlinks from other businesses and directories in your area tell Google that your company is relevant to local patrons. This will help you generate more organic traffic from people searching for businesses near them.

Here are some strategies to build local backlinks.

• Get listed on local directories – Track down business listing websites like Yelp and add your company to them. Doing so increases the chance that potential customers stumble upon you in their search for local attractions. For more info, see the next point.
• Partner with local businesses – Not everyone is a direct competitor, and a healthy partnership can generate more patrons for you both. Suggest collaborations and guest posts with small and large local enterprises.
• Get involved in the community – Attend and host events, sponsor charity drives, or volunteer in community initiatives. Prove yourself as a valuable asset to your locality and other businesses or local news outlets may mention you on their own websites.
• Promote businesses and community members – When you promote others in the community, you attract local clicks and backlinks yourself.

7. Get Listed in Local Directories

As mentioned above, getting your business listed on as many local directories as possible is a good way to promote future traffic. Here’s a list of directories you may wish to check out.

• City-data.com
• Yelp
• Foursquare
• Better Business Bureau
• Yellow Pages
• Nextdoor
• Local.com
• Manta
• Bing Places

In addition, see if there are any directories specifically for your state or city. For example, New York City has the Online Directory of NYC Certified Businesses. Many large cities have a variety of their own directories to choose from.

8. Localize on Social Media

A good way to get more customers from certain areas is to take your local SEO strategy to social media. Here are some local SEO tips on optimizing for social platforms:

• Create social accounts – If you haven’t created social media accounts, now’s the time to start. You can create business profiles on most sites, including Facebook Pages, Instagram for Business, LinkedIn, and TikTok Business.
• Add business information – Don’t leave potential visitors and customers with no idea how to find you. Add info like your address, business hours, reservation bookings, and upcoming events. That way, it’s easily accessible from your social media page.
• Use local keywords – Local keywords and topics aren’t just effective on a website; they can also get you traffic on social media. You can also look up popular local hashtags and use those in your marketing.
• Create different accounts for local languages – International SEO is important too, and if your business has expanded to another country, you may wish to create multilingual social media accounts. For example, see the Spanish-language Coca-Cola México Twitter account.

9. Create Location-Specific Landing Pages

When you have multiple locations – especially when those locations are in different countries, doubly so if most people there speak a different language – it’s extremely important to create localized landing pages.

These should be translated into the local language of the region. In addition, use local keywords based on your keyword research and highlight the differences between your different branches.

Sometimes you might even create an entire separate website for your branches in other countries. See McDonalds Japan for a good example.

This often crosses the line into international SEO, so take into account those standards when creating your landing pages.

10. Pay Attention to Reviews

Your content isn’t the only thing that impacts local SEO – positive user reviews can too. By proving to Google that your business is credible, you may be rewarded with increased visibility in search rankings.

It doesn’t just count for SEO either. Your users themselves rely on reviews to inform themselves, and ultimately it will influence whether they decide to buy and become recurring customers.

91% of consumers say that reviews impact their perceptions of big brands in at least some way, and 88% say that they’d go for a business that replies to all reviews. Less than half would use a business that doesn’t respond to reviews at all.

Do what you can to encourage good reviews from customers. You can offer incentives for people to leave reviews (so long as you disclose this and follow other applicable legal regulations such as the FTC guidelines), or simply ask and encourage people to leave them after they make a purchase.

Not all reviews will be positive, and that’s okay. Respond gracefully to negative comments and offer to improve their bad experience, and that one-star review left in anger may just turn into a five-star review once things are smoothed over.

11. Optimize for Mobile

The web itself has long been shifting towards a mobile-first philosophy, as more and more people move to smartphones over traditional computers. But it’s not just about that trend – for local SEO in particular, a vast majority of searches are made from a mobile device.

Unsurprisingly, people use their phones to get directions while they’re driving, or to look for restaurants and other stores when they’re already out shopping.

In recent years, 82% of smartphone shoppers have used local search, or “near me” searches. That’s why you too need to adopt a mobile-first design mindset.

Therefore, one of the most crucial local SEO tips is to test your website extensively. Open it up with a smartphone and make absolutely sure that everything works. Try out your Google Maps widget that its directions point to the proper place, test your tap-to-call functionality, and implement long-tail voice search keywords that attract mobile browsers.

How TranslatePress Benefits Your Local SEO

As established above, your website plays an integral role in the implementation of local and international SEO. Two of the main factors here are localized content and landing pages. For that reason, for the remainder of the article, we’d like to talk about how our TranslatePress plugin can help you with this and other parts of your local SEO strategy.

TranslatePress Multilingual

The best WordPress translation plugin to help you implement local SEO.

Get the plugin

Or download FREE version

An Easy-to-Use Translation Interface

TranslatePress offers 100% translation completeness. By scanning the rendered website HTML for your site, it allows you to translate your website content, widgets, menus, themes, plugins, and more.

In addition, almost all of that work takes place in the same main translation interface.

Use the preview on the right to navigate to the page you want to convert to another language. Then, pick the text to translate via the drop-down menu, left and right arrows, or directly from the page.

After that, you can add your translation to the text box in the left sidebar. When you now click the Save button, the translated text automatically appears on your website.

You can use this for blog posts, landing pages, and any other content you want to offer a localized version for. Visitors can easily pick their preferred language version with the customizable language picker.

In addition, you can offer localized versions of images in the same way. Just select an image from the TranslatePress interface and choose an alternative on the left. Save and you are done.

Besides the above, with TranslatePress, you can also use automatic translations. Simply connect your website to translation services like Google Translate and DeepL and have your content converted to another language quickly and conveniently.

Powerful SEO Features

In addition to translation, TranslatePress comes with a number of features specifically made to improve local and international SEO.

First of all, it automatically implements hreflang tags. These make sure your translated pages show up in search engines for the correct local language markets and prevent you from running into problems with duplicate content.

In addition, TranslatePress Pro comes with the multilingual SEO pack. With it, you can translate your page links, SEO titles, meta descriptions, ALT tags, and other important SEO elements.

The add-on also creates multilingual sitemaps you can submit to search engines and it works with most of the popular WordPress SEO plugins.

Additionally, the premium plugin version has these local SEO features:

• User language-specific navigation – Show different menus depending on user language.
• Automatic user language detection – Automatically display your website in a user’s preferred language.
• Dedicated translator accounts — Work with freelancers and agencies to outsource your translation needs and have them work directly on your website.

Start Off With the Free Plugin Version

TranslatePress comes in both a free and paid version with three different pricing tiers. With the free version you can implement one additional language on your WordPress site. See the pricing table below for more details.

Final Thoughts: Local SEO Tips and International SEO Strategy

Whether you’re running a small store or a sprawling business with dozens of locations in multiple countries, it’s extremely important to focus on local SEO.

Implementing it doesn’t have to be hard. Some of the easy steps you can take is setting up a Google Business Profile, encouraging good reviews, and getting listed on local directories.

But the most important thing is to create localized content using high-ranking local keywords. It is one of the best ways to attract a local audience to your website.

You can also adopt these local SEO tactics as part of your international SEO strategy. Translation and localization help attract overseas visitors as well.

If you need help translating your localized content to another language, give TranslatePress a try. It makes the process of converting your website to another language very fast and easy.

TranslatePress Multilingual

The best WordPress translation plugin to help you implement local SEO.

Get the plugin

Or download FREE version

What other important local SEO tips are there? Let us know in the comments!

The post Local SEO Tips & Strategies: How to Ace Local SEO in WordPress appeared first on TranslatePress.

These are interesting questions, aren’t they? We usually think of language as something that already exists and that we choose to or are forced to learn, not something we have the power to bring into being. And yet, there is nothing stopping you from doing so.

In fact, creating your own language can be super useful. As a writer, it can lend extra credibility to your fictional universe. For scholars of linguistics, it’s a great way to gain a more intimate understanding of how language works. If you are ambitious, you might attempt to provide an easier way for people to talk to each other. Finally, it can simply be a fun new hobby.

The fact is, people have been creating languages for hundreds of years and continue to do so. If you are interested in learning how to do so, you find step-by-step instructions in this article. We will even show you how to translate your website into your own made-up language. Wouldn’t that be exciting?

Why Would You Try to Create Your Own Language?

We’ve already touched on different reasons to create your own language in the introduction. To give you a better understanding of how it can be helpful, let’s talk about them in more detail.

Build a More Immersive Universe for Movies, TV, Books, or Video Games

Surprisingly often, languages are made up for works of popular culture. There are a number of fully fleshed-out vernaculars out there that mainly exist to make works of fiction more vivid. Some well-known examples include:

• Languages of Middle Earth — For his Lord of the Rings universe, author J. R. R. Tolkien brought no less than 15 languages to different stages of completeness. Among them are two dialects of Elvish as well as Dwarvish, Entish, and Orcish. Many of his languages are even related to each other and have their own alphabets. Though a linguist by trade, Tolkien started creating languages as a hobby as early as his teens and later used them as a basis for his world building.
• Dothraki and High Valyrian — These two examples are also from a work of fiction, namely the popular Game of Thrones series. While only a few words appear in the books, the languages were greatly fleshed out for the TV series. Their creator documents the process in a Wiktionary-style repository and there is also a course on Duolingo, if you want to learn High Valyrian.
• Klingon (tlhIngan Hol) — In the Star Trek universe, Klingon is spoken by an alien race of the same name. Similar to how it happened for Game of Thrones, originally only a few words of the language appeared in the first movie before being developed further into a full language. By now, hobbyists have translated different literary works into Klingon and it, too, has a course on Duolingo.
• Na’Vi language — The final example is the languages spoken by the Na’vi, the blue alien race from the movie “Avatar”. It is the work of Paul Frommer, a linguistics expert. At the time of the first movie only about a thousand words existed, by now there are several thousand as well as complete grammar.

Made-up languages appear in many other movies, TV series, and even video games. If you are a writer, screenwriter, or other creative type, they are a great way to make the world you are spinning more believable.

Produce a Better Language

Besides needing a way for a fictional alien race or magical creatures to converse, there are also examples from history where people tried to introduce new languages for other reasons.

The most well-known example here is Esperanto. Its inventor wanted to develop a universal language in order to make it easier for people around the world to communicate and collaborate. Today, it is the most widely used language of its kind. Estimates say there are about 100,000 speakers.

However, it is not the only example. In the 19th century, several people tried to compose universal languages to make trade and diplomacy easier. Before that, John Wilkins aimed to replace Latin with a more precise and unambiguous language to provide a better way for scientists and philosophers to communicate.

Finally, Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th-century nun, made up her own language called Lingua Ignota (“unknown language”) to use in her religious songs.

Learn and Have Fun

Besides the above, another reason why you might construct your own language is for the hell of it. There is a growing community of language enthusiasts and linguists who simply do it as a hobby or creative exercise.

After all, what better way is there to understand how language works than by trying to create your own? Doing so forces you to really understand and think through grammatical rules and the function of different language elements.

Plus, maybe your made-up language could spawn into a world-famous book series with a multi-million dollar movie deal, who knows?

How to Create Your Own Language Step-by-Step

Alright, now we are getting to the interesting part. Below, we will cover how to make up your own language in a series of steps.

An important word to be aware of at this point is “conlang”. It stands for “constructed language” and is what people who do this as a hobby or professionally call creating your own speech. The goal here is for you to end up with your own conlang.

Note that you don’t have to do the steps below in this exact order. They all influence each other, so you can go back and forth between them if one of them inspires a change to something you already covered.

In addition, while we are covering languages that are spoken out loud here, remember that that is not the only way to communicate. There is also sign language and other ways to convey meaning. Therefore, if you plan to create your own language, especially for fictional work, don’t feel constrained by spoken words.

1. Settle on Phonology

If you do go for a spoken language, your first is phonology. That means what it sounds like and it forms the basis for pretty much everything else.

Every language has a limited sound inventory that almost all words adhere to. There are always exceptions, of course, but, because phonology is mostly consistent, it’s usually easy to pinpoint them. Therefore, if you want your language to feel natural, you need to settle on an overall sound for it.

There are several ways to go about this. One way is to look to existing languages for inspiration. Is your creation going to be a tonal language like Mandarin or Vietnamese, where the meaning of a word changes depending on pronunciation? Will it use clicks like Xhosa, the rolled r of Spanish, or umlauts like German?

Humanity has found many different ways of speaking. Getting to know existing languages can help you collect ideas for your own.

Still drawing a blank?

In that case, you might want to check out the international phonetic alphabet. It basically contains all sounds the human mouth can produce including example recordings.

Create a table of consonants, vowels, or other sounds you want to include. That way, you can reference them when during the rest of the creation process and stay consistent.

However, you don’t have to limit yourself to normal phonology. If it makes sense for your language, you can also include elements that are not used in the real-world such as whistles or claps.

2. Invent Your Own Writing

Language is not just spoken (or even not spoken at all, as we settled earlier) but most often also written. So, when you create your own language, you not only get to decide what it sounds like but also how it looks on paper (or whatever people in your universe write on).

Here, too, you can look at language systems that already exist. Is your language using an alphabet that makes up all the words like English or does it have characters where each instance is a word in itself like Chinese? Does its writing only have consonants like Arabic, where the vowels are inferred? Or how about Egyptian hieroglyphs?

After you have made that basic decision, do you want to freehand your writing system completely from scratch or borrow from existing ones?

If you do borrow from elsewhere, consider using the same letters but changing their pronunciation. Plus, you have the possibility to use accent marks like é, ò, or ǎ.

Just be sure to note down the transliteration for your own language so you yourself don’t forget what your constructed language sounds like. Aside from that, the world is your oyster.

3. Create Your First Words

Once you can speak and write, you are in a good position to start building your basic vocabulary. How big that is going to be and what it contains really depends on your purpose.

Do you need a complete language or are a few words enough? Is it just some dialogue in a book or long conversations in a TV series? In some cases, starting with a naming language, which has just a few names for people and places or some simple phrases, may be enough.

In addition, what’s your topic? What will people talk about in your language? Hobbits? Magic? Space travel? This also dictates what kind of words you are going to need.

A good starting point is to begin translating everyday words, such as:

• Greetings — Think “hi”, “hello”, “good day”, etc. Note that you might also invent your own greetings based on the universe of your language. More on that below.
• Pronouns — Think about how your language would express concepts like “he”, “her”, “it”, “they”, etc.
• Articles and numbers — “the”, “a”, and the numbers from one to ten are always important.
• Common verbs — A surprisingly small number of verbs make up a large share of everyday language. If you need inspiration, you can start with this list in English.

Other ideas you can start with are days of the week, body parts, food, names for jobs, clothing, colors, etc.

Start a dictionary that you can add to over time as you encounter important concepts for your language or things in real life. Once you have a good stock of words, you can also experiment with combining them to create compound words. Here are some extreme examples of that from my native German.

4. Define Your Grammar

With your first words in place, it’s time to figure how they work together. That’s where grammar comes in.

There are a lot of possible grammatical rules so it’s easy to get overwhelmed. So, start with the basics, which is word order.

Does your language use subject-verb-object (SVO) such as in English and many other languages (“I write poems”)? Do you prefer subject-object-verb (SOV) like in Japanese (“I poems write”)? Or do you want to arrange your sentence order in a different way?

After that, there is a whole catalog of questions to think about:

• How does your language form plurals?
• How do you signify possession?
• Do words have different genders?
• Where do you put adjectives, adverbs, etc.?
• Are there cases and inflections in your language, meaning verbs and nouns change depending on grammatical position and function? Are there irregular verbs that don’t follow the same rules as others?

Here it really helps if you are familiar with the grammatical rules of different languages. It will give you a bigger pool to choose from. If you are struggling, refer to the resources below.

5. Invent Some Unique Quirks

Something that really helps make your language feel more authentic is to introduce quirks and idiosyncrasies.

For example, I had my mind thoroughly blown when I learned on a vacation to Thailand that the word “thank you” in Thai changes according to the gender of the speaker. Depending on whether you are a man or a woman, you use a different word to express gratitude and this applies to other words, too.

While I was, of course, familiar with the concept of words changing depending on who you address or the gender of what you are talking about, this was a new one. It is quirks like this that really make a language feel real and that you can use when creating your own.

One good way to approach this is to think about the context your language appears in. For example, we all know the adage that the Inuit have dozens of different words for snow. While the truth of that is debatable, it sounds believable because of the environment they live in.

How would the surroundings of your constructed language have shaped it? What kind of society uses it? What is the life like? Which topics would people talk about? How did the language evolve?

Thinking about these questions can help make your language more interesting.

6. Name Your Language

Finally, one of the fun parts is that you get to name your language. Here, the first thing to remember is to pick a name that is in keeping with its phonology.

Aside from that, the classic approach is to name it after the country or people who are using it. See German for Germany, Dothraki for the Dothraki people, or Klingon for, well, the Klingons.

However, you don’t have to do this. You can also come up with your own name that has a different meaning. For example, Tolkien called his languages Sindarin and Quenya. Both words mostly mean “language” in their respective dialect. So, you have some freedom in naming yours as well.

And don’t be too hellbent on getting it right the first time. Even Tolkien changed the name of the Quenya language several times before settling on the final name.

7. Look Into Useful Resources

Above is a basic rundown of how you can go about creating your own language. Of course, we can not cover every single thing here since language is a complex beast and you can go into countless small details if you want.

Therefore, if you feel like diving deeper into this topic, you are in luck. There are plenty of people who create conlangs as a hobby and they have created many valuable resources to help others do the same. You can get started with these:

• The Language Construction Kit
• Language Creation Society
• r/conlang on Reddit
• A Conlanger’s Resource List

The above should be enough to keep you occupied for a while.

Create Your Own Language Using a Language Generator

If you really don’t have time to go through the process described here, you can also make up a new language with a generator. These are software solutions that can create a new language at the touch of a button.

It’s not enough to invent your own secret language with friends but can suffice for a book or role-playing game. You usually simply choose some input such as phonemes you want to use or words you need and the generator will create the language for you.

If you want to give it a try, the best we could find are:

• Vulgarlang Conlang Generator
• Scriboly Word & Phrase Generator
• Taskade AI Language Generator
• FlowGPT Language Creator

The last two are AI language tools.

How to Use TranslatePress to Convert Your Website to Your Own Language

If you have finished your language and would like to translate your website to it (or any other language, constructed or not), you can do so very easily using TranslatePress. Our translation plugin has all the features you need to make your site multilingual, even when using a fictional language.

TranslatePress Multilingual

TranslatePress is the easiest way to translate your WordPress site. It's fast, won't slow down your website, works with ANY theme or plugin and it's SEO friendly.

Get the plugin

Or download FREE version

Just like making invented universes more engrossing, this opens up a lot of opportunities. Imagine offering the website for your fantasy novel in the language of one of the races. Wouldn’t that be a cool user experience?

So, here’s how to do it.

1. Create a New Language

With TranslatePress installed on your website, go to Settings → TranslatePress → Advanced → Custom Language.

Here, you have the option to create your own language to use on your website. This is how to fill in the information:

• Language code — This is the abbreviation of the language that will be used in the URL, such as en for English or de for German.
• Language name — The name of your language in English.
• Native name — The name of your language in itself. There is an option in TranslatePress to display the native language name, which is what this information is for.
• Automatic translation code — Machine translation services like Google Translate and DeepL use this to recognize and automatically recognize languages. When translating to your own language, this is irrelevant.
• Flag URL — URL of a PNG image containing the flag of your language so that it can show up on your website.
• Text RTL — Check this if your language is written from right to left.

When you are ready, click Add. Here’s what it looks like in our example:

At the end, click the Save Changes button to save your custom language.

2. Add Your Constructed Language to Your Site

After this, in order to make the language available on your website, it’s time to head to General.

At the top, be sure that you have chosen the correct default language of your site (in this case, English). Then, under All Languages, use the drop-down menu to pick your new language. It should appear under Custom Languages.

Click it and then hit Add. Make any other adjustments you need, such as customizing the slug, and save at the bottom.

3. Translate Your Content

Now the fun part begins. Click on Translate Site in the settings or WordPress admin bar.

This lands you on the main translation interface.

Here, use the drop-down menu at the top left to switch to your new language. This way, you will see all changes immediately.

After that, pick the text you want to convert to your newly made-up language. You can do that via the second drop-down menu, back and forth arrows, or directly by hovering over any text in the preview window on the right and clicking the little pen symbol.

Doing so will open up a new field for providing the translation. Enter the translated word or phrase in your own language, then click Save at the top.

After that, the translated version will automatically appear in the preview window.

In addition, it will also be visible on the front end of your site whenever somebody uses the language switcher to see it in that language (you can also add one using Elementor).

The best part is, you can use the same method to translate any images. Just pick them from the translation interface, provide a link to a localized version, and save.

4. Take Advantage of Other Features

Aside from what we went over above, TranslatePress offers a number of useful features to make turning your website multilingual super easy:

• Automatic translation — When not translating into languages that nobody else knows, you can use machine translation services like Google Translate and DeepL to convert your site more quickly and easily. Note that only Google Translate is available in the free plugin version.
• String translation — Translate strings from themes, plugins, WordPress itself, and more.

There is also a premium version of TranslatePress with additional features:

• Multilingual SEO pack — Translate your page URLs, SEO titles, meta descriptions, ALT tags, and other important SEO markers. This is super important to get found on Google.
• Translator accounts — If you are working with translation agencies and freelancers to convert your website to other languages (that you didn’t invent), you can make it easier by allowing your service providers to do translations directly on your site.
• Browse as user role – Look at your site as a specific user role in the translation editor. If your site has content for different user levels, this lets you understand if it has all been properly translated.
• User language-specific navigation – Adds the ability to display different menus for different languages.
• Automatic user language detection – Automatically show your website in a user’s preferred language (via browser settings or location).

TranslatePress Pro comes in three pricing tiers so you can pick what makes the most sense for you.

TranslatePress Multilingual

TranslatePress is the easiest way to translate your WordPress site. It's fast, won't slow down your website, works with ANY theme or plugin and it's SEO friendly.

Get the plugin

Or download FREE version

What Language Will You Invent?

Creating your own language can be a fun exercise to flex your linguistic muscles or serve a particular purpose such as making a fictional work more believable. It can also simply be a way to explore how language works or serve a number of other purposes.

Above, we have gone over the process of inventing languages. You first settle on a basic sound inventory, then branch out into an alphabet, create the first words, and move on to grammatical rules that make them work together. The final touch are some quirks and oddities that make language more alive and authentic.

You are now fully equipped to try and create your first conlang. If you want to take a shortcut, try out one of the language generators. Finally, if you are looking for a way to use your newly constructed language (or any other additional language) on your own website, be sure to give TranslatePress a try.

Are you trying to create your own language currently? What are you most struggling with? What do you enjoy the most? Let us know in the comments!

The post How to Create Your Own Language in 7 Steps (+ Fun Tips & Tools) appeared first on TranslatePress.

However, the two types of tags have different functions. That’s why it’s important not to confuse them or use them interchangeably. Otherwise, it could lead to unintended consequences and bad outcomes for your website.

To avoid that, in this post, we will take a deep dive into hreflang and canonical tags. We will talk about what they are, best practices and common mistakes for their usage, and how to set them up correctly both manually and with the help of WordPress plugins.

What Are hreflang and Canonical Tags (And Why Do They Matter?)

In order to get a good grasp on this topic, let’s first define the two types of tags .

hreflang Tags Explained

Hreflang tags are code snippets introduced by Google in 2011 to help international websites. Their function is to tell search crawlers the language and geographical location a web page is intended for. For example, this is what an hreflang tag aimed at French and Switzerland looks like.

<link rel="alternate" href="https://yoursite.com/ch" hreflang="fr-ch" />

It consists of two parts, the rel="alternate", which says that this is an alternative version to an existing web page, and the hreflang="fr-ch" part that specifies its target. fr stands for the language and ch for the country, based on the ISO language and country codes.

This especially matters for international websites that might have pages with virtually the same content but aimed at different language markets. Hreflang tags allow you to signal to search engines that you have localized versions for searchers from these markets.

What’s more, you can not only target another language, but a particular locale. For example, while there are several Spanish-speaking countries in the world, despite the common language, they differ in dialect, culture, and consumer tastes.

Using hreflang attributes, it’s possible to create web pages aimed at each market and mark them accordingly. That way, you can localize them for the audience they are intended for while still using the same language.

Canonical Tags in a Nutshell

Canonical tags fulfill a similar role as hreflang tags. They are also HTML snippets that signal to search engines which URL is most relevant to searchers. Here’s what they looks like:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://yoursite.com" />

However, instead of differentiating between language varieties, canonical tags show that a web page is to be considered the official version or master copy among pages with the same or very similar content.

Why would you have the same content on several web pages? There are different reasons:

• One page has http:// in front of it, the other https://
• You are republishing an article that already exists on another website (with permission, of course). Or, you publish the same content on another platform like Medium for more reach.
• Parameters in the URL that signal small changes in a web page, such as filters in e-commerce websites (e.g. https://www.yourwebsite.com/Camping-Hiking/b?ie=UTF8&node=16435151)

In all of these cases, a canonical tag can let search engines know what they should consider the main version of the page in question and that they should index it instead of the others.

SEO Benefits of hreflang and Canonical Tags

Why should you go through the trouble of adding these tags to your website? Because they offer numerous SEO benefits:

• Avoid duplicate content issues — Marking your content explicitly prevents search engines from considering your pages to be duplicates. That way, they are less likely to serve the wrong URL to searchers or punish you for low-quality content.
• Transfer ranking signals — Authority from incoming links and other ranking signals are passed on to the canonical page and shared by all language versions.
• Improved user engagement — Sending visitors to the correct version of your pages, e.g. the language they prefer, is good for conversions, dwell time, user engagement, etc. These are all things theorized to have a positive impact on search rankings.
• Prevent wasting crawl time — With canonical tags, you can prevent search engines from indexing certain pages. That means they don’t blow the crawl budget on unimportant content instead of what you want indexed.

What’s important to realize is that these tags are signals, not binding directives. You use them to ask search engines to do something (pretty please), but it’s up to them and their algorithm to honor your request.

hreflang and Canonical Tags: Best Practices and Common Mistakes

Now that we know what these tags are, let’s examine how to use them properly.

Place Them in the Right Locations

Your first question is most likely where these links should appear. The hreflang and canonical tags are commonly included in the <head> section of a web page’s HTML markup.

In fact, for canonical tags that is the only option. Their hreflang cousins can also appear in HTTP headers or an XML sitemap. We’ll talk about how you get them there in detail below.

Correctly Format Your Tags

One of the most important things to know is that the two tags can not be combined. Something like the example below won’t be understood by search engines.

<link rel="canonical" rel="alternate" href="https://yoursite.com" hreflang="fr-ch" />

Instead, you have to display both types of tags separately, like so:

<link rel="alternate" href="https://yoursite.com" hreflang="fr-ch" />
<link rel="canonical" href="https://yoursite.com" />

Of the two signals, canonical tags are the simpler ones to implement. It basically just needs to contain rel="canonical" as well as the destination.

Hreflang tags are a bit more fickle. The first thing to note here is that you don’t necessarily need to include both a language and country code. Only the language is enough. This allows you to set up more of a catch-all page for people from allover the world running searches in it.

At the same time, using a country code allows you to create very specifically targeted pages. We’ve already talked about that in the context of Spanish above. Important: if you do use a regional code, make sure it appears second, not first, in the hreflang tag. Also check for the correct language and country codes.

At the same, note that alternative language versions don’t have to be on the same domain. If you are using separate web addresses for your different language versions, you can still use hreflang to clarify that they belong together.

<link rel="alternate" href="https://yoursite.com" hreflang="en-us" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://yoursite.br" hreflang="pt-br" />

In addition, for both types of tags, you should include full URLs of your pages, not relative ones. Here is the difference:

• Full URL: https://yoursite.com/shop/pants
• Relative URL: /shop/pants

By using absolute URLs, you are make it absolutely clear which pages you mean and avoid ambiguity and mistakes. If you are struggling with creating your tags, you can also use a hreflang tag generator or canonical tag generator.

Make Them Bidirectional and Self-Referential

The next important point is which pages to place your tags on. Let’s start with hreflang tags.

An important part here is that, all languages versions need to have hreflang references to every available alternative. Put differently, all your pages have to point to each other. If they don’t and an hreflang tag only goes in one direction, Google will ignore it.

For example, if you have a page in English, Spanish, and French aimed at the US, Canada, Spain, Colombia, and France your hreflang tags would look like this:

<link rel="alternate" href="https://yoursite.com" hreflang="en-us" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://yoursite.com/uk" hreflang="en-gb" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://yoursite.es" hreflang="es-es" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://yoursite.es/col" hreflang="es-co" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://yoursite.fr" hreflang="fr-fr" />

This exact code needs to go to each of the pages mentioned in it.

This is important as it establishes a relationship between these pages and lets Google know that they are several versions of the same content in different languages and for different user groups.

This also means one hreflang tag always points to the page it appears on. This is called “self-referencing” and is good practice for both hreflang and canonical tags.

Having a canonical tag on a web page that points to itself is a signal that this is the official version. It reinforces the message of tags pointing to the same page from other locations. For example, if page A is the main page and page B a duplicate, both would have the same canonical tag below.

<link rel="canonical" href="https://yoursite.com/page-a" />

Avoid Conflicting Statements

It’s really important to choose the right URLs for both hreflang and canonical tags, especially if you use them together. That’s because, while they are similar in their function, what they signal to search engines is quite different.

Hreflang tags are inclusive, while canonical tags are exclusive. The first say, “index me and the other page but for different locales”, while the second says, “don’t index me, index the other page”.

So, if you have a page with hreflang tags that also has a canonical tag pointing anywhere but itself, it would give two very confusing statements. It basically says, “index me and this other page and also don’t index me, index the other page instead”.

In that case, search engines might make their own decisions, which could not be in keeping with your wishes. So, be really careful about this. Aside from that, the order of actual tags does not matter, as long as they are present and correct.

Using hreflang=”x-default”

A final thing to mention here is the x-default tag. This is something you can use to set a default page among different language versions. When you do, search engines will fall back on it if there is no more specific version for the language and/or locale of a searcher.

This also allows you to set a preferred version if you have pages in the same language but for different locales (e.g. US and UK English). Doing so helps when someone searches in that language but is not from either locale.

Here is what the x-default tag looks like:

<link rel="alternate" href="https://yoursite.com" hreflang="x-default" />

Note that it doesn’t have any language or locale information. Also, using the x-default tag is not mandatory but good practice.

How to Manually Set Up hreflang and Canonical Tags

If you have followed along so far, you should theoretically be ready to implement hreflang and canonical tags on your own website.

The only question that remains is, how do you do that?

Let’s go over that now, starting with how to do it manually. Here, you basically have two options to place them:

• The aforementioned HTML <head> section
• Your website’s XML sitemap

(Another options are HTTP headers but those are only important for content like PDF documents.)

Using the <head> section

This option is most feasible for small sites with few and mostly static pages where you edit the HTML files directly. It’s not very practical for larger websites that are created dynamically (like in WordPress).

Once you have created your tags using the tips and/or generators above, open your HTML files with a code editor and copy and paste them between the <head> and </head> tags, preferably toward the top.

Save and you are done. If in doubt or if doesn’t seem to work, run your pages through an HTML validator.

This method is relatively easy, however, it can also be annoying if you ever make changes to your site structure or URLs. In that case you would have to edit each page individually again.

Including hreflang Tags in the Sitemap

If you are going to implement your tags manually, the sitemap might actually be the best choice. It allows you to make changes all in one place, which is easier to manage should there be any URL changes or simply new language versions to add to it. The format looks like this:

<url>
	<loc>https://yoursite.com</loc>
	<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="https://yoursite.com" />
	<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-gb" href="https://yoursite.com/uk" />
	<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="es-es" href="https://yoursite.es" />
	<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="es-co" href="https://yoursite.es/col" />
	<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-fr" href="https://yoursite.fr" />
</url>

Each page with different languages versions has to be wrapped in <url> brackets. The <loc> element at the top defines the original URL, while the <xhtml: link> element defines each language alternative. It basically use the same format as the HTML version.

Here, too, you can use the aforementioned generator tools to create the hreflang tags. As explained before, canonical tags have to go in the <head> section, you can not define them in the sitemap. Finally, if you don’t know how to create an XML sitemap for your website to begin with, Google has an explanation.

Implementing Tags Using WordPress Plugins

We can probably agree that the methods above seem a bit time-consuming. Therefore, if you are running a website based on WordPress an easier way to implement hreflang and canonical tags is using plugins.

For canonical tags, you can use an SEO plugin. Pretty much all of them come with options to define canonical URLs and also generate canonical tags automatically.

For example, Yoast SEO adds self-referential canonical tag to all your pages by default.

On the other hand, a great option to implement hreflang tags is TranslatePress.

Why is that?

Because the plugin literally does it for you. All you have to do is configure which languages you want to add to your site under Settings → TranslatePress.

Once you have done so and saved your choices, TranslatePress takes care of the rest. It adds relevant hreflang tags to the HTML of all language versions of your web pages as well as your XML sitemap.

Plus, TranslatePress can differentiate between regional versions of languages, such as Brazilian Portuguese, Mexican Spanish, or Swiss French. When you pick the respective options in the settings, it sets up your hreflang tags so that they reflect both the language and locale.

Other TranslatePress Benefits

If you like the above, you might be interested to hear what else TranslatePress has to offer. It’s not just good for hreflang tags but also has many more features that make it a perfect solution for creating international and multilingual websites.

First of all, there is the super simple translation interface.

Use the preview on the right to navigate your website and pick text to translate directly from the screen or the list in the upper left corner.

Then, add the translation in the appropriate field and save.

After that, the translated content automatically appears on your website, where visitors can use the built-in language switcher to pick their preferred language.

That’s it. You can also use the same method to show language-specific images and, to make things faster, use automatic machine translation via Google Translate.

This is all part of the free plugin, which lets you add one additional language to your website. If you want more than that, there is TranslatePress Pro, which also comes with these additional features:

• Automatic translation with DeepL — Instead of Google Translate, use the more accurate DeepL translation software.
• Multilingual SEO pack — Translate other important SEO markers such as URL slugs, SEO titles, meta descriptions, ALT tags, and more.
• User language-specific navigation – Display different menus depending on the language of your visitors.
• Automatic user language detection – Automatically reroute visitors to their preferred language version (via browser settings or location).
• Translator accounts — Make working with translation agencies and freelancers easier by giving them direct access to your site.
• Browse as user role – Look at your site as a specific user role in the translation editor.

TranslatePress Pro comes with three different pricing plans so you can choose one that fits your needs.

Ready to Master hreflang and Canonical Tags?

The two tags we talked about in this post are useful signals for search engines on how they should index and rank your web pages. Hreflang tags allow you to define page versions for particular languages and countries. Canonical tags, on the other hand, denote the official version among similar content pieces.

Here are the most important points to remember:

• Hreflang tags are inclusive, while canonical tags are exclusive
• Include hreflang links to every language version on each localized page as well as links to the page itself
• Don’t try to combine both tags into one statement
• Any web page with an hreflang tag can not have a canonical tag pointing anywhere else but itself
• Use x-default statements to define default and fallback language versions

When you first learn about these tags, it can seem a bit scary and technical. However, as you have hopefully seen, they are not all that hard to implement, especially if you have a tool that can do it automatically like TranslatePress. It not only helps you translate your WordPress website, but also set up hreflang tags without you having to lift a finger. Give it a try now!

TranslatePress Multilingual

TranslatePress is the easiest way to translate your WordPress site. It's fast, won't slow down your website, works with ANY theme or plugin and it's SEO friendly.

Get the plugin

Or download FREE version

Do you have any questions concerning the usage of hreflang and canonical tags? Please ask them in the comments below!

The post Hreflang and Canonical Tags: The Only Guide You’ll Ever Need appeared first on TranslatePress.

For one, we will show you how you can translate any German website you encounter on the web into English. At the same time, and more importantly, we also cover how to permanently convert your own website from the German language to English if that is what you are trying to do.

You will find that either way doesn’t pose too much of a problem when using the right tools.

Translate Any Website From German to English With Our Free Translator Tool

Let’s first cover an easy way to translate German websites to English with a free and easy online tool. This is, for example, if you encountered a German site while surfing the web and you think it might contain important information but you don’t sufficiently speak German to understand it.

Or maybe you would like to purchase something from a German website. Maybe a cuckoo clock, a rulebook, or a pound of Sauerkraut? (Ok, enough with the stereotypes about my people.) In order to avoid translation fails, you are looking for a way to translate the entire web page into English.

Fortunately, there is nothing easier than that with our free website translator tool.

Simply click on the link to open it, then follow these steps:

1. Choose the language of the website you want to translate, in this case, German.
2. Pick your desired target language, e.g. English.
3. Enter the URL of the web page or website you want to see in English.
4. Click the Translate button.

When you do so, it automatically opens the translated website version for you.

Now, you can get the information in your desired language.

This is a great quick solution for when you want to see any third-party site in another language. But what if you want to translate your own website from German to English permanently, to help out your visitors? Let’s talk about that now.

How to Translate a German WordPress Website to English

While German is not one of the hardest languages, it is not necessarily known for easy pickup (even as a native German, I still struggle on a daily basis). And even though it is one of the most common languages on the Internet, the group of people who speak it is still relatively small, compared to English. Therefore, if you have a German website, translating it to English can be a good idea to make it accessible to a larger audience (for example, to do multilingual e-commerce).

The good news is that, if your website is built with WordPress, you can easily do so with the free TranslatePress plugin. It makes your website multilingual and allows you to translate it into a multitude of languages, including German and English.

TranslatePress also includes machine translation features that make converting your website much quicker. But you are also free to do the translation by hand via a handy-dandy interface.

The best part: If all you need is one additional language, the process is completely free! Let’s go over how to translate your website from German to English step by step.

1. Install TranslatePress

The first thing to do is install the TranslatePress WordPress plugin.

As mentioned, you can do the entire thing with only the free version of TranslatePress. However, there are advantages to using the Pro version, which we will in the course of this tutorial. If you start with the free version and later decide you want some Pro features, you can always upgrade without losing any of your work.

So, let’s get started.

As a first step, log in to your WordPress site and go to Plugins → Add New. Here, search for TranslatePress by name and click the Install Now button when it appears.

After the plugin has finished downloading, click the Activate button that appears.

2. Choose Your Languages

With TranslatePress active on your site, it’s time to pick the desired languages for your website. This happens under TranslatePress → Settings in the WordPress back end.

At the top, choose your default language, in this case German. You have several options. Since German is spoken in several countries, you can also choose Austrian and Swiss German as well as formal or informal varieties (which change the pronouns used to address someone — yes, German is fun!). You can also change the level of formality after the fact.

In this case, we are choosing German (Formal).

After that, it’s time to determine your target language. For that, use the drop-down menu under All Languages to pick English.

TranslatePress also recognizes different varieties, like US and UK English as well as varieties spoken in Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand. Pick the one that is most appropriate. We are going with US English here.

When satisfied, click Add to submit your choice, then save at the bottom.

3. (Optionally) Enable Automatic Translation

This step isn’t a must but it can save you a lot of time in the translation process. TranslatePress allows you to automatically translate your website with the help of machine translation services like Google Translate and DeepL. Both are AI translation tools known for their quality and speediness.

In the free version, you are limited to Google Translate. TranslatePress Pro also has the option to use DeepL, which is more accurate than Google Translate.

However, for German to English, Google Translate does a decent job and you can always just use it as a baseline and manually correct and refine the automatic output.

If that is something you are interested in, head on over to Automatic Translations in the TranslatePress settings.

Here, the first thing to do is set the drop-down menu under Enable Automatic Translation to Yes. After that, you get access to additional options.

The most important one is where you choose your translation engine. As mentioned, in the free version you only have Google Translate available.

Then, you need to acquire an API key and paste it into the respective field. There is a link to instructions on how to acquire one below but we also have them here for the Google Translate API and DeepL API. After you have pasted the key, save it at the bottom.

You might also want to check out the other options, especially the setting to limit translation to a certain number of characters per day since that can be a cost factor. Be aware, however, that this is something between you and the translation service, it’s not up to TranslatePress.

Once you are satisfied, it’s time to move on.

4. Translate Your Site in the Translation Interface

Almost all translation work in TranslatePress happens in the same interface. You can access it by clicking Translate Site or Translate Page in the TranslatePress settings or the WordPress taskbar.

This lands you on the main TranslatePress translation interface.

It consists of two parts. On the right, you have a preview window in which you can not only see a live preview of your soon-to-be translated site but also use it to navigate the site and choose content to convert to English. On the left, on the other hand, you have the sidebar in which you provide the translation.

The process is conceivably easy. Pick any text (also called “string”) via the preview window. You can do so directly by hovering over some text and clicking the pen symbol, using the drop-down list at the top left to choose any of the strings present on the page or cycle through them with the backward and forward arrows below it.

Once you do that, you’ll see a new field appear in which you can input the translated string. Even better: if you have enabled automatic translation, the translation will appear automatically.

Make any changes and refinements necessary. Once satisfied, click the Save button at the top to make the translation live on your site — that’s it! From now on visitors can access the different language versions and they will start appearing in search engines.

What Content Can You Translate?

This works for all types of content, from menu items over headings to forms, buttons, and more. You can translate your homepage, other pages, header and footer, and every other part of your website.

Plus, TranslatePress offers the possibility to provide different images for various languages, meaning you can include alternative versions that might have translated text or are simply more culturally appropriate for a certain language market. This is important for transcreation and localization and it works the same same way as for text. Hover over an image, click the pen symbol, then provide an alternative in the sidebar.

Be sure to brush up on how to do image SEO while you are at it!

In addition, if you are not versed in German and don’t trust automatic translation, you might decide to work with freelance translators or a professional translation service to get your translation done. If that is the case, the TranslatePress Business license lets you create dedicated translator accounts so that whoever you hire can work directly on your website. Just for your info.

5. String Translations from Themes, Plugins, Etc.

As mentioned above, most of the translation work happens in the same interface. Unlike other translation plugins, TranslatePress scans the page HTML for text to translate and works directly with what appears on the site.

However, there are also some strings that are added to your site by themes and plugins. You can find those in the String Translation menu.

When you click it and choose Gettext at the top, you find a list of strings TranslatePress found while scanning plugin and theme output.

Hover over any of them and click Edit to open the same translation options as for the rest of your site. Easy peasy.

Under Emails, you can find text that shows up in emails send from plugins, such as notifications.

In the Pro version, this menu is also where you can translate URL slugs of your pages so that they have web addresses in their own language, which is great for SEO.

6. Set Up Your Language Switcher

Once you have new languages on your site, you need to give visitors the possibility to access them. This happens with a language switcher, which, by default, appears as a floating menu in the bottom right corner of your website.

If that’s not up to your liking, there are plenty of customization options. You find them in the TranslatePress settings at the bottom.

Let’s go through them one by one.

Available Options

The first option is to place the language switcher as a shortcode. That means, you can post [language-switcher] anywhere on your site where you want the switch to appear.

There is also a language switcher block for the WordPress block and Site Editor to achieve the same thing.

In the settings, you can decide what you want the switcher to display: a language flag with the full name, flags with abbreviated names, only the full or short name, or only flags.

The second option is to enable the language switcher as a menu item. In that case, you are able to add it to the WordPress menu.

Note that this only works with classic menus, so it depends on the WordPress theme your site is using. You have the the same options for customizing the appearance as for the shortcode.

The final option is the default floating language switcher. You can switch it on and off in the settings, decide what it contains (flags, names, etc.), pick a theme (light or dark), and a position (one of the four website corners).

Any changes you make here, save them to apply them to your site. If you are using Elementor, we also have an article on how to add an Elementor language switcher.

By the way, in the free TranslatePress version, visitors will manually have to switch to their preferred language version. If you upgrade to a Business license, you can also redirect them automatically dependent on their browser language or IP address.

7. Take Advantage of Advanced Features

As mentioned, you can achieve all of the above with the free plugin version. However, there is also TranslatePress Pro with additional features besides those mentioned above, including:

• Multilingual SEO pack — Allows you to translate your page URLs, SEO titles, meta descriptions, ALT tags, and other important SEO markers. This helps your translated pages to get found on Google.
• Browse as user role – Look at your site as a specific user role in the translation editor.
• User language-specific navigation – Display different menus for different languages.

Purchase TranslatePress Pro now to get access to these features and more.

Easily Translate Your Website From German to English

In this guide, we have covered how to translate websites from German to English, both for third-party sites as well as your own. To reiterate, for the first, you can use our free website translator tool, and for the second the TranslatePress translation plugin.

TranslatePress Multilingual

TranslatePress is the easiest way to translate your WordPress site. It's fast, won't slow down your website, works with ANY theme or plugin and it's SEO friendly.

Get the plugin

Or download FREE version

Translating your website happens in a simple interface. You can also use automatic translation for faster turnaround and to create a baseline to work with.

Best of all, all of the above is possible with the free version. If you want more, give TranslatePress Pro a try.

The post How to Translate a German Website to English (2 Easy Ways!) appeared first on TranslatePress.

To shine a light on these instances, in this post, we have collected a number of humorous mistranslations or failed translation attempts from world history as well as advertising. These examples show how even small nuances can have a big impact in the complexity that is language and lead to many unintended consequences.

Famous Mistranslations in History

We are starting off on a slightly more serious note. Some of the instances below, while funny, happened in contexts in which they could, and sometimes did, have serious consequences.

US President Carter Woos Poland

In 1977, US President Jimmy Carter traveled to Poland for a news conference. Unfortunately, the interpreter provided to him for that occasion was not fully qualified to translate Polish, leading to a number of mistranslations.

First of all, when the president mentioned that he had left the US that morning, the translator relayed it as “when I abandoned the United States,” making it sound as if Carter was never to return. In addition, the president’s desire to “come to learn your opinions and understand your desires for the future” was instead translated to the audience as a strong lust to get to know the Poles in the bedroom. Even Carter’s expression that he was happy to be in Poland was relayed to listeners as him being happy to grasp at Poland’s private parts.

After discovering these incorrect translations, the interpreter was replaced by another. However, things didn’t get much better. At another speaking engagement, the new translator mostly sat silently as he had difficulties understanding Jimmy Carter’s Southern accent and decided to stay quiet rather than making similar mistakes as his predecessor.

You can find the original New York Times article from that time here.

Translation Fails Jimmy Carter Again

It seems like Carter just can’t catch a break when it comes to translation failures. Just a few years after the aforementioned incident, in 1981, he gave a speech at a small college in Japan. He opened with a joke, and after the interpreter relayed it to the crowd, the audience immediately started laughing.

Surprised by that strong reaction, Carter asked the interpreter about it. The translator then reluctantly admitted that he had said, “President Carter told a funny story. Everyone must laugh.” Yeah, that’s not how humor works.

Nikita Khrushchev Threatens to Bury the USA

Another mistranslation from a head of state that caused quite a stir happened in a speech by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956. At a reception at a Polish embassy in front of ambassadors of Western countries, he concluded his talk with an apparent threat by saying, “We will bury you!”, which caused envoys from twelve NATO states and Israel to leave the room.

However, most likely this was caused by a mistranslation. Khrushchev was probably trying to say something more akin to “We will be present at your funeral,” meaning, “We will outlast you.” He was also referring to the victory of socialist over capitalist ideology, not making physical threats. But during the Cold War, you really wanted to choose your words wisely.

Machines Can’t Keep Up With Justin Trudeau’s French

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also fell victim to a translation fail when visiting the White House. Americans who watched his speech on ABC TV saw him praising “Nazi innings”, “railroad stations in Motorola,” and talking about “us old guys.”

Giving the speech in French, his comments were automatically translated by a computer program, highlighting the problem that machine translation is not always reliable. You can view the video yourself below.

Martians Made in Italy

One of the oldest mistranslations might have given us the idea of intelligent life on Mars. Back in 1877, Giovanni Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer, wrote down his observation of what he thought were natural valleys and canals or “canali”, in Italian, on Mars.

Years later, this word was mistranslated as meaning canal-like irrigation systems, causing parts of the scientific community to believe that the red planet was inhabited. Some even wrote books about their theories or Martian society. No, that’s not a joke. You can read the full story here.

Funny Advertising Translation Fails for the Ages

In the modern world, companies increasingly internationally, causing them to translate their products, services, and marketing campaigns into different languages. If you think that this would be an area rife with embarrassing (and hilarious) mistranslations, you’d be correct. Here are a few of the best ones.

Mercedes: Cars to Die For

Western companies entering the Chinese market face unique challenges. Besides having their websites translated into Chinese, they need to get their names converted into an entirely different alphabet.

China famously uses characters, not letters, and each character is pronounced as one syllable and has its own meaning. As a consequence, when translating brand names into Chinese, companies need to find characters that not only imitate the sound of their name but also have a meaning that makes sense. This process, known as transcreation or localization, has invited a number of translation fails over time.

One such mistranslation was the transliteration of the Mercedes-Benz brand name. It was first rendered as 奔死 (pronounced “bēnsǐ”), which sounds similar to “Benz.” Unfortunately, the characters chosen can mean as much as “to rush to die,” which is not really something you want to associate with your cars.

By now, the car manufacturer is using the characters 奔驰, which are pronounced “bēnchí” and mean as much as “to run quickly” or “to speed,” conveying a much more appropriate meaning. It’s stuff like this that makes Chinese one of the hardest languages to translate.

Would You Like Fingers With That?

Here’s another translation fail from the Far East. Kentucky Fried Chicken ran into some problems with their famous slogan “Finger lickin’ good.” Unfortunately, the Chinese version initially said “Eat your fingers” (吃手指) instead. Time to remove Hannibal Lecter from the board of directors it seems.

Coca-Cola Greets Death

When Coca-Cola wanted to appeal to the native population of New Zealand, they translated their slogan “Hello, mate” into Maori, or at least they tried. Unfortunately, they only replaced the “hello” part, turning it into “Kia ora, mate.”

Apparently, whoever did the translation didn’t know that in Maori, “mate” means “death,” giving the whole thing a slightly different meaning. Well, soft drinks are not considered good for your health, so there might be something to it. However, that’s probably not what the company intended.

Now Available: The Mitsubishi “Wanker”

Another case of translation fail in advertising happened to Mitsubishi. In 1982, they started selling a car model named “Pajero,” named after the Pampas cat, whose Latin name is “Leopardus pajeros”.

So far, so good.

Unfortunately, in Spanish, the word “pajero” means “wanker”, which usually isn’t something you want to write on your car. For that reason, Mitsubishi renamed the car to “Moderno” for the Spanish, Northern and Latin American markets. Probably a good idea.

Compensating for Something?

Continuing with the theme of unfortunate car names, Ford released the “Pinto” in the 1970s. Sales in Brazil, however, were likely disappointing.

The reason?

“Pinto” is a word in Brazilian Portuguese slang that denotes male genitalia.

Nike: Just Gain Weight

More stories from China. In 2016, Nike published a special edition of their Air Force 1 sneakers that could be customized with two characters, 發 (“fā”) and 福 (“fú”).

Separately, they mean good things, such as “to get rich” and “good fortune.” However, if you put them together, the meaning slightly changes. 發福 means “fat” or “to gain weight” in Chinese, quite the opposite of what you want to achieve with sports sneakers.+

Ford, at It Again

Ford put their foot into it again more recently. A few years ago, they launched an ad campaign that stated that “Every car has a high-quality body.” You know, as in the body of the car.

However, it took on a slightly different meaning when translated for Belgium. Here, the slogan said something more akin to “every car has a high-quality corpse.” Unless you are targeting med students or selling hearses, that’s probably not what you want to say about your vehicles.

Parker Pen – Writing Utensils With Birth Control

Here’s another instance in which the translation of an advertising slogan went awry. Parker Pen were marketing a leak-proof pen with the slogan “It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you.”

When translating the slogan into Spanish, apparently the translator was fooled by a false friend (one of the things that make translation difficult) and translated “embarrass” with the Spanish “embarazar.” Unfortunately, though they sound alike, “embarazar” actually means “to impregnate.”

So, Parker Pen promised that their writing utensil would not leak in your pocket and get you pregnant. What a relief!

Nokia and Mazda Whoring for Capitalism

Apparently, Spanish is full of language pitfalls (even though it’s one of the most used languages on the Internet). Nokia also ran into a problem with one of their phone model names, the “Lumia.” Apparently, that word can mean “prostitute” in Spanish.

A similar thing happened with the Mazda “Laputa.” I’ll let you figure that one out yourself.

Milk Gets Uncomfortably Personal

The “Got milk?” campaign by the American Dairy Association was one of the most successful marketing campaigns out there. It featured well-known celebrities and one of the most widely recognized slogans.

However, in their marketing campaigns targeting the Spanish-speaking population, they went without their usual catchphrase.

How come?

Because when translating it word for word into “¿Tienes leche?”, what you are actually asking is “are you lactating?”. And that’s not really the kind of milk they intended to talk about.

For that reason, the campaign went with alternative slogans such as “Toma leche” (“drink milk”) and “Familia, Amor y Leche” (“Family, Love and Milk”).

HSBC Does Nothing

The HSBC bank got into some hot waters with the internationalization of their slogan as well. They asked their clientele to “Assume nothing” in relation with their services.

Unfortunately, the slogan ended up mistranslated. In several countries it said “Do nothing” instead.

While that is generally not the worst advice, it’s not not really what you want to stand for as a bank. It cost HSBC $10 million to rebrand.

Electrolux Sucks

You might think the above heading is a bit offensive, however, that’s what Electrolux said about themselves.

Don’t believe me? I can prove it. Their slogan was literally “Nothing sucks like Electrolux.”

Apparently, when the Swedish company launched the campaign in the 1970s, “sucking” didn’t have the same meaning as “being really bad at something,” at least not in the UK. Here, the campaign was a big success. However, it took on a different life when extended to the US market.

Tonic Water = Toilet Water?

Schweppes ran into some mistranslation problems when their advertising failed to gain traction in Italy. Apparently, their tonic water was suggesting that it contained ingredients from the toilet.

How could that happen?

The problem lay in the fact that Schweppes decided not to translate “Tonic Water,” which it also doesn’t do in many other markets. However, the Italian word “water” can, in colloquial speech, also mean “toilet bowl.”

Anyone up for a toilet tonic? Me neither.

An Unfortunate Domain

This one is not so much a translation fail as it is an apparent failure in language familiarity. An Italian company selling battery chargers needed a new web domain for its international website. They wanted to go for a .com top-level domain but still make it clear in the domain their country of origin.

What was the result?

Welcome to powergenitalia.com. I don’t think there is a need for me to explain this. Needless to say, the company changed to the more harmless powergen.it later.

General Electric Has Gas

The final example shows that it’s not always about translation or using the wrong word; sometimes, pronunciation can also become a problem.

In 1988, the US company General Electric launched a new partnership brand in Europe and named it “GPT.” This all seems harmless, professional, and unproblematic unless you speak French and realize that, in French, GPT is pronounced “J’ai pété.”

Why is that a problem?

Because it means “I farted.” Enough reason to change the brand name to “GPTel” in France.

I wonder how ChatGPT feels about this, especially considering that “chat” is the word for male cat in French. So, in France, ChatGPT basically sounds like you are confessing to your cat about a recent flatulence.

Bonus Translation Fail

Here is another example of a translation fail. It is entirely fictional, however, it’s also one of my favorite jokes, so you get it as a bonus.

Avoid Translation Fails on Your Website With TranslatePress

As we have seen above, everyone fails at translation sometimes. However, when trying to offer your WordPress website in more than one language, it shouldn’t be because of your translation plugin. For that reason, we want to take a moment to talk about how our plugin TranslatePress makes website translation really easy.

TranslatePress Multilingual

The easiest way to translate your WordPress website and avoid mistranslations.

Get the plugin

Or download FREE version

Translate Your Web Pages With Ease

In TranslatePress, you do pretty much all the translation work in the same easy interface.

Use the preview window on the right navigate to the pages you want to provide another language for. Pick any of the displayed text via the drop-down menu, left and right arrows, or directly from the page.

After that, all you have to do is add the translation in the box that appears and click the Save button.

When you do, the translated text will immediately appear on your website and visitors can easily change to their preferred language with the customizable switcher.

Provide Localized Images

Visuals add a lot of cultural relevance to your content and they can also include text. For that reason, they often have to be translated, too.

TranslatePress makes that easy as well. Simply select a visual from the TranslatePress interface and provide an alternative on the left. Save and you are done. It’s just as easy as translating text. It helps with image SEO, too!

Use Automatic Translation

First of all, you should never only rely on machine translation. That just means inviting similar translation fails and mistranslations as we have seen above.

At the same time, it can still be a great tool to save time, effort, and money. That’s why TranslatePress offers automatic translations via Google Translate and DeepL. Switch it on under Settings → TranslatePress → Automatic Translation. Acquire and paste an API key and save to activate it.

Once machine translation is active on your site, when you choose text from the TranslatePress interface, you will automatically find its translation in the respective field. Here, you can adjust it as necessary and then publish it in the usual way.

Take Advantage of Multilingual SEO

TranslatePress Pro also comes with a multilingual SEO pack. To make sure your translations don’t fail to rank in search engines, it allows you to translate your page URLs, SEO titles, meta descriptions, ALT tags, and other important SEO markers.

The SEO Pack also creates multilingual sitemaps and works with most of the popular WordPress SEO plugins. If you want to learn more about this topic, read our guide on SEO for new websites.

Start With the Free Plugin

TranslatePress comes in both a free and paid version with three different pricing plans. The free version allows you to add one additional language to your WordPress site. If you want access to the SEO Pack and automatic translation with DeepL, these are part of TranslatePress Pro, which also includes these features:

• Browse as user role – Look at your site as a specific user role in the translation editor.
• User language-specific navigation – Display different menus for different languages.
• Automatic user language detection – Automatically show your website in a user’s preferred language (via browser settings or location).
• Translator accounts — Make working with translation agencies and freelancers easier by allowing them to do translations directly on your site.

TranslatePress Multilingual

The easiest way to translate your WordPress website and avoid mistranslations.

Get the plugin

Or download FREE version

Wrapping Up

So, that was a long list of translation fails and mistranslations with extra hilarity mixed in. What can we learn from the above?

First of all that apparently you shouldn’t translate your brand, products, or slogans into neither Chinese or Spanish. Both languages appear to be absolute minefields when it comes to translation (if you want to translate your Spanish website into English, we’ve got your back).

Secondly, that you should always check your translations from multiple angles. Especially converting marketing materials into another language is not easy and can land your company on a list like this involuntarily.

Thirdly, we should learn that, if you do get a translation wrong, you shouldn’t feel too bad about it. Even million-dollar companies produce translation fails of the highest proportion. The best you can do is laugh about it, fix it, and move on with your life.

What is the biggest real-life translation fail you have experienced? Share it with us in the comments below so we can have a laugh together.

The post Worst Translation Fails & Mistranslations: 20+ Hilarious Examples appeared first on TranslatePress.

• Is it accurate enough, especially in contexts where nuance and specific terminology are important (e.g., legal, medical, or technical fields)?
• What are the benefits of using AI translation in comparison to human translation or even “classic” machine translation?
• Where do translator tools driven by artificial intelligence fall short? What do you need to pay attention to when using them to avoid mistakes?
• Which are the best AI translation tools and services for your particular use case?
• And finally, how can you use AI translation for your WordPress website?

We aim to answer that and more in the following post, so if you want to get on top of the AI translation game, stick around.

Understanding AI Translation: The Basics

Let’s start off with defining exactly what AI translation is, how it works, and the pros and cons of using it.

In the end, AI translation is simply machine translation, meaning translating text with computers instead of humans. However, it uses artificial intelligence technologies, particularly machine learning, natural language processing, and neural networks for better accuracy.

Not sure what any of this means? Then let’s dive into it a bit more.

How Do AI Translation Tools Work?

Unlike traditional translation methods, which often rely on direct word-for-word replacement, AI translation systems learn from vast amounts of data to understand and interpret language patterns and context.

The systems analyze bilingual or multilingual text data, learning the nuances, syntax, and semantics of different languages. They then use algorithms to detect patterns and make predictions about how words and phrases correspond to each other in order to provide accurate translations.

Advanced models also incorporate contextual information. That means they consider entire sentences or paragraphs to provide translations that are not just literal but contextually appropriate.

Thanks to the popularity of ChatGPT, there is also a new aspect that comes into it. Because of the ability of generative AI (which is what ChatGPT is), AI translation increasingly includes the ability to improve the content in the target language. It’s also better at recognizing context and generating translations that accurately reflect the original content’s context, tone, and meaning.

“Classic” translation AI is not always generative AI but there is a lot of overlap in these two technologies.

The Benefits of Using Artificial Intelligence for Translating

How does working with AI systems improve the translation process? Here are a few of the benefits this method of translating offers:

• High accuracy — Compared to older forms of machine translation, AI translation software is more accurate and better at accounting for context and nuances in their translation.
• Speed — Like machine translation in general, AI systems can translate large volumes of text much faster than human translators. It basically happens in real-time.
• Scalability — They can handle translating multiple languages and dialects simultaneously, which is a challenge for human translators. Usually, you would need an agency or work with many smaller companies for that. AI translation capabilities also go beyond text, as we will see below.
• Cost-effectiveness — Using AI translators reduces the cost associated with professional translation services, especially for large volumes of text.
• Learning ability — AI systems improve over time, learning from new data and user corrections. They are constantly improving their accuracy and fluency.
• Customizability — Some AI translation systems offer options to train their models on specific jargon or language styles, making them more suitable for specialized fields and industries.
• Ease of use — Most systems simply need you to input text and will spit out the translation automatically. For website translation, you can also use a plugin like TranslatePress, which connects with some of the best AI translation software on the market.

Existing Challenges and Limitations

At the same time, there are also areas in which AI translation struggles:

• Context and subtleties — While they are better at it, AI systems may still not be able to translate idioms, slang, and culturally specific references accurately. AI also cannot fully grasp emotions and may miss the tone or cultural sensitivity required in certain translations. These are very basic translation problems that often need human intervention to work out.
• Legal and ethical concerns — In areas where precision is paramount, like legal or medical fields, reliance on AI translation can raise ethical and legal concerns due to the potential for errors.
• Problems with rare languages — AI translations for less commonly spoken languages may be less reliable due to limited available training data. They are among the hardest languages to translate for any kind of machine translation.
• Data dependency — Generally, the quality of AI translation is heavily dependent on its training data points. If there isn’t enough or if it is of bad quality, the translation quality will suffer. This is a problem with all AI models and can lead to things like language bias.
• Privacy concerns — Use of AI translation in sensitive or confidential circumstances raises concerns about data privacy and security. You might not know what will happen to your information after you upload it.

In short, AI translator tools struggle with a lot of the same things that make translation difficult for humans. What they have going for themselves is the fact that they are faster, cheaper, and more scalable in comparison to human translators. Additionally, they are more precise than older methods of machine translation.

But, in the end, like general machine translation, it’s usually best to combine them with expert human translators in order to avoid critical errors.

9 Top AI Translation Tools and Services

Now that we know more about the pros and cons of AI machine translation, let’s look at some of the best tools out there that offer translation supported by artificial intelligence. We will also talk about the best use cases for each of them.

1. DeepL

DeepL Translator has gained acclaim for delivering some of the most accurate translations, especially in European languages. It supports over 30 languages, including English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, and Indonesian. Its focus seems to be less on providing every language available and more on being really good in those that it offers.

The latter is made possible thanks to the use of neural networks. They help produce accurate and contextually appropriate translations, including in legal, academic, and technical topics.

DeepL offers instant online translation including PDFs, Word Docs, PPTs, and more. It also preserves the original formatting of translated files. Additionally, the translation service offers the possibility to add a glossary and even comes with an AI assistant to improve writing. Finally, it has apps for Windows, iOS, and Android, comes with browser integrations, and has a strong commitment to confidentiality.

All of the above makes DeepL particularly well-suited for professional environments. It offers a free version with limited functionality, and paid plans start at $8.74, with a 30-day free trial available.

2. Google Translate

Google Translate is a pioneer in AI translation. It was one of the first machine translation tools on the market and is therefore hugely popular. The service is renowned for its extensive language support, covering over 100 languages, though it does better at some languages than others.

Google Translate updated to neural translation in 2020 and has been improving ever since. It offers real-time text and speech translation capabilities and you can put together your own phrasebook. The AI translator can also translate documents and websites directly in the browser (as seen at the beginning of this post).

Another standout feature is its ability to translate images and blend translated text automatically into the new visuals.

Google Translate also has a mobile app that can translate text by point your camera at it and also offers an offline mode, which is particularly handy in areas with limited Internet access.

It works best for general-purpose translations, travel assistance, and providing a quick solution for personal and informal use. It is completely free, though there is a paid API.

3. Microsoft Bing Translator

Microsoft is at the forefront of AI development and was the first to add an AI assistant to their Bing search engine. They also offer AI-supported translation tools.

At its most basic, it can do online text translation, similar to Google Translate or DeepL, for more than 130 languages.

In addition, via a mobile app, you can take advantage of speech translation and even translate live conversations in and from 45+ languages.

Where Bing Translator really shines is that it integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products, including Office, Skype, Edge, and Visual Studio. That makes it especially suited for document translation.

You can also use it for specialized topics and customize the model to your industry, which is why it’s often valued in professional and educational settings.

4. ChatGPT

ChatGPT is probably what most people think of when they hear AI. It woke up the world to what artificial intelligence is capable of with its human-like text responses and writing capabilities. However, it is also able to translate text as well as use its language capabilities to improve the in- and output.

You can simply prompt ChatGPT to convert text into another language, and then use it to polish the results. It can also translate documents you upload and covers more than 50 languages.

In addition, you can find ChatGPT integrated into many other services that use AI translation, including Lokalise. It also forms the basis for the aforementioned Bing Chat.

But, be aware that translation is just one of the things that ChatGPT does and not its main purpose. It is missing important functionality, such as glossaries or style guides. Depending on which version you are using, it is also not necessarily the fastest and has a limit on how much text it will process.

Additionally, just like for other machine translation, it makes sense to run the results by an expert before using them. ChatGPT has a free version, with a premium plan priced at $20/month.

5. Copy.ai

Copy.ai is similar to ChatGPT. It’s an artificial intelligence for content creation and optimization that also has translation capabilities.

What’s helpful is that you can add your own brand voice guide, which helps with transcreation and localization of your voice and marketing message. You can use this AI translator for sales and marketing material, customer support, documentation, press releases, blog posts, email sequences, and more.

However, again, Copy.ai is not primarily a translation software. Therefore, while it is better at outputting polished language, you should definitely check the translation quality in other ways, meaning with a knowledgeable real-life translator.

Copy.ai offers support for more than 25 languages and has a strong emphasis on data privacy. It comes with a limited free plan, paid plans start from $36/month.

6. Google Bard

Bard is Google’s AI assistant, which they are also experimenting with in their new search experience. Like other AI chatbots on this list, it can do translations and supports 26 languages (according to itself).

You can use Bard for text translations and also upload images and ask it to translate anything written in them. However, there are no other options such as file uploading or adding a glossary or style guide. But you can tell the chatbot to assume a certain persona or change the tone of both your source text and the translated result.

Again, however, Bard’s functionality is not primarily translating, so proceed with caution. It is free of cost, for the moment.

7. Systran

Systran is one of the oldest translation services around. It is one of the pioneers in machine translation, so it’s no wonder that they have updated their services with AI capabilities.

Systran supports more than 55 languages and 150 language pairs and has industry-specific training data for many industries such as banking and finance, healthcare, legal, and government. You can also train your own AI model.

Systran is known for its robust privacy policy, making it suitable for sensitive translations. Besides their AI translation software, they also offer real-time online translation for text and documents. The latter are free, but if you want access to their AI translation models, you need to book a call. Have a look at our Systran review for more information.

8. Wordly.ai

Wordly.ai is an AI translation tool that stands out a bit as it has a different focus than most other entries on this list. It specializes in providing live translations and captions for meetings and events.

The service supports more than 50 languages and over 2,000 language pairs. It works for in-person, virtual, hybrid, webinars, videos, and integrates with major conference platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams. You can use glossaries and blocklists as well as receive translated transcripts of your meetings.

Wordly.ai charges by the hour and according to the number of attendees. For more detailed pricing information, you can schedule a call or sign up for an account.

9. Sonix

Sonix is another AI translation service that’s a little bit different. It focuses on AI-powered transcription and video translation, with the ability to automatically create subtitles.

The AI translation software has collaboration features, custom dictionaries, and integrates with popular applications, from Zoom to Adobe Premiere.

Sonix charges per hour of transcription, either as you go or with a subscription. There is a free trial available to dip your feet in.

Other Notable Mentions

Besides the top players above, there is a smattering of other online tools that offer AI translation services for different purposes:

• Amazon Translate — An AI-powered machine translation service that’s available via API. It supports more than 5,500 translation combinations across 75 languages and is aimed at customer communication and support.
• Yandex Translate — A popular machine translation choice especially in Eastern Europe and Asia. Yandex Translate can convert text, images, websites from a link, and documents. It also has translation features in its browser, especially for Russian.
• Promt — Promt specializes in translating large documents and offers several neural machine translation products with advanced customization. It is ideal for businesses and professionals and supports 40+ languages.
• iTranslate — This translation app has over 100 languages and has its own AI model named Grammatica. It features voice-to-voice conversations, text translation in camera, offline mode, and an extensive dictionary. This makes it ideal for travelers and language learners who need quick, accessible translation on mobile devices.
• Papago — An AI-supported translation and language-learning app that focuses on Asian languages. It shines in conversation translation, image translation, real-time voice translation, and comes with a dictionary and phrasebook.

How to Translate Your WordPress Website With AI Using TranslatePress

If you are running a website based on WordPress and want to bring the power of AI translation to it, there’s nothing easier than that. TranslatePress allows you to connect your site directly to Google Translate and DeepL (the latter requires a license) and take advantage of their neural machine translation for your website. The process is also very easy.

TranslatePress Multilingual

Easily integrate AI translation with WordPress and turn your website multingual in a few clicks.

Get the plugin

Or download FREE version

Switch on Automatic Translation

After installing and activating TranslatePress, go to Settings → TranslatePress → Automatic Translations. Use the drop-down menu to set Enable Automatic Translation to Yes in order to get access to the rest of the options.

Start by choosing your translation engine. In the free version of TranslatePress, you only have access to Google Translate. Owners of a Business or Developer license can also opt for DeepL.

The next step is to obtain an API key for your AI translation software of choice. Follow our guides for how to do so for Google Translate and DeepL. You can also use the link underneath the input field to find these instructions.

After providing the API key and saving, you are pretty much good to go. You might also want to look at the available settings to possibly limit the number of characters to translate automatically per day.

This can be important to limit costs, which can occur from using Google Translate and DeepL. Be aware that this doesn’t run through TranslatePress but it’s something you arrange with the providers directly. The menu also shows the number of daily characters you have already translated automatically.

Use AI Translation on Your WordPress Site

Once done with the configuration, taking advantage of the AI machine translation for your WordPress site is very easy. Step one, click on Translate Site in the admin bar or TranslatePress settings.

This gets you to the main translation interface of TranslatePress.

Use the preview on the right to navigate to the page you want to convert to your target language. After that, choose your desired content through the drop-down menu, forward and backward arrows, or by clicking on any string in the preview screen.

The moment you do, you should immediately see the input field for the target language filled in with a translation.

Check it for correctness and make any changes you want, then click Save (alternatively Ctrl/Cmd+S) to commit the translation to your site. Done.

Other Useful TranslatePress Features

Besides unleashing the power of AI translation on your website, TranslatePress additionally offers the following features:

• Image Translation — You can also provide alternative language versions of your visuals. It’s just as easy as doing it for written content and happens in the same interface.
• Multilingual SEO — Translate your page links, SEO titles, meta descriptions, ALT tags, and other important SEO elements with our multilingual SEO pack. It also creates sitemaps for your different languages you can submit to search engines and works with most of the popular WordPress SEO plugins.
• Translator Accounts — Create dedicated translator accounts to outsource the translation of your website to freelancers and agencies and have them work directly on your website.
• Language-specific navigation – The premium version allows you to provide different menus depending on the language chosen by the user.
• Automatic language detection – Automatically show your website in a user’s preferred language (via browser settings or location).

TranslatePress comes in both a free and paid version with three different pricing tiers. The free version lets you add one additional language to your WordPress site. Check the pricing table below for more information.

Take Advantage of AI Translation Tools Now!

AI-powered machine translation is quickly becoming the new standard. It promises better accuracy, nuance, and context awareness while maintaining the benefits of speed and cost-effectiveness of machine translation. While still facing the same concerns as general translation by machine, it’s likely to get better over time.

Above, we’ve looked at some of the best AI translation services and software that you can currently get your hands on to take advantage of this new technology. Even better, AI translation is also available in the back end of your WordPress website for a smoother website translation process.

Check out TranslatePress to use AI translation on your website.

TranslatePress Multilingual

Easily integrate AI translation with WordPress and turn your website multingual in a few clicks.

Get the plugin

Or download FREE version

What’s your favorite AI translation tool? Share it in the comments below!

The post 14 Best AI Translation Tools & Online Translators to Use Right Now appeared first on TranslatePress.

This can create some quite practical problems. Whether you are trying to translate your homepage, a contract, or anything else, it impacts the effort, time, attention, and also often price that goes into it. More difficult languages have fewer translators, which means rates can be higher. Plus, even machine translation services struggle with some languages more than others.

If want to translate your website to compete in an international market, it’s best to know which languages can give you the most trouble. That way, you are able to decide whether or not the effort is worth it.

So, what are the most difficult languages to translate and what makes them so challenging? Let’s find out together.

Elements That Make Languages Problematic to Translate

As a first step, let’s talk about why certain languages are harder to convert than others.

Different Language Roots

One of most important considerations here is the language root. There are about 7,100 different languages in the world, which have been divided into 135 language families.

In addition, you have some language isolates that evolved outside of these families, some of which we will get to know below.

Why does this matter?

Because languages with the same root usually share a lot of similarities. Their grammar and syntax is similar, there are more word correlations and even some shared cultural influences. All of that makes them much easier to translate in between each other.

On the flipside, of course, the further away the relation between two languages, the more challenging it can be to translate between them. Doing so requires a lot more word rearrangement to fit the same meaning into different syntax systems.

Vocabulary Size

Another common difference between languages is the number of words that are available in them. While, because of the evolving nature of languages, it’s hard to pinpoint the exact size of different vocabularies, we can look at dictionary size as a proxy.

Here, English has one that is over 700,000 words, while German is at only about 330,000. That means, English has a lot more words available to say the same thing. It can also express itself with more nuance. So, if you wanted to translate English into German, you might run into difficulties finding the exact equivalent. This is a common thing that makes translation difficult.

Other Problems

Aside from that, there are general translation problems that we already talked about on this blog, such as:

• Preserving the tone of the original content, especially in literary translation
• Homonyms where words can have the same spelling but different meaning and pronunciation, which can especially make translating written text difficult
• Cultural considerations, such as translating idioms, expressions, slang, or humor

5 Hardest Languages to Translate (And Why They Are Difficult)

Taking the above into account, which languages then are the most difficult to transform into others? While it’s hard to say that with absolute certainty, here are a number of worthy contenders.

1. Mandarin Chinese

By number of speakers, Mandarin is the most common language in the world. About 1.1 billion people converse in it, mostly in mainland China, where it is the official language. However, you also find Mandarin speakers in countries with significant Chinese population like the USA or Australia.

One thing that makes it very different from Western languages is that it’s a tone language. That means, depending on how you pronounce the same syllable, it can have very different meanings.

This is one of the hardest things for Chinese learners to get used to.

In addition, as you can already see above, Chinese doesn’t use an alphabet. Instead, it has a system of written characters, each of which represents a word. You can also combine them to form new words.

So, this language is very different from many others from the get-go.

Why Is Mandarin Chinese Hard to Translate?

The main thing that contributes to difficulties in translating Chinese is the sheer number of characters. In English, you have an alphabet of 26 letters out of which can basically put together every single English word in existence. If you know them, you are pretty much literate.

Mandarin Chinese, on the other hand, has 50,000-80,000 characters (depending on who you talk to), each with its own meaning and sometimes very subtle differences.

As a consequence, just to be considered literate in Chinese, you need to know about 2,500-4,000 characters. Quite a few more than 26, isn’t it?

What makes this even more difficult is the fact that there are traditional and simplified characters, which can look quite different from each other.

Furthermore, there are additional features that make Mandarin one of the hardest languages to translate:

• It doesn’t have inflections, so you have to understand tense from context
• Mandarin has complex grammatical rules that are very different from Western languages
• Chinese also has many idioms, for which you need cultural understanding to correctly transpose them
• The language is rich in homophones, which makes translating spoken Chinese challenging

From the above, you can probably guess that it takes a lot longer to even get to a place where you can translate Mandarin Chinese. To truly master the language, you could spend a lifetime.

2. Korean

We are continuing with another Asian language. Korean is the most spoken language isolate, about 80 million people use it as their mother tongue. Since it evolved mostly without influence from other languages, it has some unique characteristics.

Like other Asian languages, Korean uses its own writing system. However, unlike Chinese, here it’s more like an alphabet. It uses 24 basic letters, 14 consonants and 10 vowels, and there are 27 complex letters you can create by combining the basic letters.

Difficulties in Translating Korean

Besides having to know an entirely different alphabet, one of the main troubles in translating Korean stems from its unique grammatical structure. It uses a subject – object – verb syntax that can get very complex in longer sentences.

In addition, it has many particles that denote meaning and grammatical function. Plus, like other languages, Korean has lots of homonyms that spell and sound the same but have different meanings.

There are also a number of cultural considerations to take into account. Korean has a strong language hierarchy, meaning different levels of formality and politeness that translations need to observe. This can be especially tricky in transcreation and localization.

Another thing that puts it among the hardest languages to translate is its sheer number of words. In the list of the largest dictionaries above, Korean is in second place with over a million words. This richness often makes word-for-word translation impossible and you need to approximate the meaning.

3. Arabic

Arabic is spoken in 25 countries from Morocco to Egypt to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

What’s surprising to hear is that many of these countries speak their own version of the language. While there is a standardized variant (Modern Standard Arabic or MSA) used for print, media, formal speech, legislation, etc., most users of Arabic speak their own local dialect. Dialects can be so different from each other that they are often mutually unintelligible. Overall there are about 360 million native speakers of all varieties and 270 million who speak MSA as a second language.

Arabic also uses its own writing system in the form of an alphabet with 28 letters and text runs from right to left.

What Makes Arabic Difficult?

The number of dialects and the fact that they are very different from each other is one of the main factors that make Arabic hard to translate. If you are not familiar with a particular dialect, it’s very easy to get the meaning wrong.

In addition, Arabic is said to have a large vocabulary, some even claim there are 12 million Arabic words. While there are no verified sources for that, with so many dialects, it does make sense that there would be a large number of unique words existing apart from each other.

However, even the standardized Modern Standard Arabic poses a challenge to translate, especially in written form. It’s not only using its own alphabet, the letters can be very similar and hard to distinguish.

What’s more, written Arabic only includes consonants, not vowels, upping the difficulty even more. In addition, each letter has several writing forms depending on where it appears in a word.

Finally, in website translation, the fact that Arabic runs from right to left can cause problems for website layout and design.

4. Thai

Thai is the official language of Thailand. It is basically spoken only in a single country but by over 69 million people. Thai evolved without influence from Western languages and borrows from other Asian languages. Because of that, it has few commonalities with languages like English.

Thai is also a tone language. You can pronounce words five different ways and, like in Chinese, the meaning changes depending on their pronunciation.

In addition, Thai uses its own writing system with 44 consonant and 16 vowel symbols.

The latter combine into 32 different vowels. Thai also uses many types of diacritical marks above, below, before, and after consonants to indicate tone.

In What Way is Thai Hard to Translate?

Its nature as a tone language with its own writing system already qualifies Thai as one of the hardest languages to translate. However, there are some extra factors that increase its difficulty.

For example, the language has no articles, so you need to understand the number of nouns from context. It also doesn’t place spaces between words and there are no full stops between sentences. Instead, a single space denotes the end of a sentence. In addition, there are no upper and lower cases.

Thai also has a unique syntax, for example, adverbs and adjectives appear after the words they modify. All of this doesn’t make it easy on translators.

5. Hungarian

The final entry on our list of the hardest languages to translate is Hungarian. It is the language of choice for 17 million people in the world, mostly in Hungary and several neighboring countries such as Austria, Serbia, Croatia, and Ukraine. Hungarian is also one of the official languages of the European Union.

Unlike other entries on this list, the language uses the Latin alphabet, however, extended with some additional letters to denote some of its unique sounds.

What Makes Hungarian So Difficult?

The main reason why Hungarian made this list is its grammar. It’s known to be a language with one of the most complex grammar rules out there.

The language has 14-35 different cases (depending on who you ask) and uses a lot of suffixes, for example, to determine tense and possession. At the same time, it only has two tenses and you need to look to sentence context to understand more complex temporal relationships.

In addition, Hungarian has fourteen vowels with different accents that can change their meaning. What’s more, it uses a lot of idioms that you have to be culturally adept enough to understand. All of this makes it hard to learn and translate.

Other Difficult-to-Translate Languages

Besides the five above, here are a few runner-ups for the hardest language to translate:

• Japanese — Japan’s official language has four different writing systems (kanji, hiragana, katakana, romaji), its own sentence structure, and different levels of politeness to observe. Among other challenges.
• Finnish — Part of one of the smallest language families, Finnish is hard to translate because it uses a lot of colloquial speech. Consequently, spoken words are often different from written language. There is also no future tense and 15 grammatical cases.
• Mongolian — A mix of Chinese, Russian, and Finnish, Mongolian uses the Cyrillic alphabet with some extra characters and is generally very hard to learn for English speakers.
• Polish — 14 declensions, seven cases, a free word order that is not bound to common sentence structure, a complicated gender system, and consonant clusters that make it hard to pronounce – do we need to say more?
• Icelandic — Spoken by fewer than 400,000 people and almost unchanged since the 9th century, Icelandic has very complex grammar, a unique vocabulary, and very few loanwords that could help you out.

What Is the Hardest Language for Google Translate?

So, the above are some of the hardest languages to translate for human translators. The question is, is it the same for machine translation software like Google Translate?

While Google itself does not publish any data on which languages its translation software is best and worst at, there have been numerous studies on this topic that we can turn to to get a better idea.

Study Findings

A Preply study from 2023 looked at Google Translate’s accuracy in translating to different European languages. Their findings were that it’s best at translating into English and less accurate in the other three languages they examined. Apparently, the service especially struggles with idioms and expressions.

Another study looked at Google Translate as a tool for conveying medical instructions to patients in different languages. Twenty volunteers evaluated 400 translated discharge statements translated with the machine translation services.

They found that Spanish had the highest accuracy rate (94%), followed by Tagalog (90%), Korean (82.5%), Chinese (81.7%), Farsi (67.5%), and Armenian (55%). Overall, the translation accuracy was satisfactory at 82.5%, however, you can see that it dramatically decreased for less common languages.

Next up is the 2019 update to a study originally from 2011. They examined 2,550 language pair combinations and found that translations between English and German, Afrikaans, Portuguese, Spanish, Danish, Greek, Polish, Hungarian, Finnish, and Chinese tend to be the most accurate.

Yet another study translated 20 English phrases to the 102 non-English languages supported by Google Translate at the time. Fluent speakers of these languages evaluated the translations for accuracy. Here are those in which Google Translate did the best:

• Afrikaans
• German
• Portuguese
• Spanish
• Polish
• Chinese
• Croatian
• Dutch
• Galician
• Greek
• Italian
• Latvian

At the same time, translations of Bengali, Haitian Creole, and Tajik failed 100% of the time. In addition, languages at which Google Translate failed 80% or more of the time were Kurdish, Nepali, Latin, Malaysian, Urdu, Maori, Cebuano, Georgian, Persian, Punjabi, and Uzbek.

Finally, one study looked at the translation accuracy of ten medical phrases across 26 languages. Here, African languages scored lowest (45% correct), followed by Asian languages (46%), and Eastern European languages (62%). Western European languages were most accurate at 74%. Swahili scored the lowest with only 10% correct, while Portuguese scored highest at 90%.

These Results Are Not That Surprising

Are the outcomes above expected? Well, maybe a little bit if you know how Google Translate works. The machine language service improves its capabilities by examining multilingual content online. While at the beginning it used statistical machine translation, it now works with AI and machine learning. However, Google Translate still uses real-life online content as training data.

If you look at the most common languages on the Internet, you can see that English is by far in the pole position. Therefore, it’s no surprise that that’s Google Translate’s best language to translate into. It likely simply knows more about this language than any other.

That also explains why it finds less common languages the hardest to translate. There is fewer training data for those.

Hardest English Words to Translate

Just because it didn’t make the list of the hardest languages to translate, that doesn’t mean English is always a peach to work with. As a bonus section, let’s look at some of the words the English language has to offer that aren’t easy to translate either.

Put

“Put” seems like a simple word. However, its difficulty comes from the fact that can take on so many roles:

• to put something on the shelf
• to put something off
• to put yourself in a situation

In other languages, you don’t often have a word that is so universal. You have to use more distinct words like “to place”, “to lay”, etc. That makes “put” surprisingly hard to translate one-to-one.

Free

Another word that you wouldn’t necessarily think is hard to convert into another language is “free”. However, here, too, you have the problem that it can take on a range of meanings:

• to be free of cost
• to be free from captivity
• to have time
• to be unburdened

You get the picture. In other languages, you have separate words for those things, in English only one.

Awkward

This is another one of English’s hardest words to translate.

Why?

Because it frequently doesn’t have an equivalent. You are left having to describe it. And how do you describe awkward without using the word itself?

Y’all’d’ve

That’s not really a word but more like a phrase pressed into one. In case you are not familiar with it, the above means “you all would have”. A phrase that, in itself, is perfectly translatable, however, how do you display the condensed version in another tongue? If you have proposals, leave them in the comments!

Ghosting

The final example of the hardest English words to translate is “ghosting”. It describes the process when someone cuts another person out of their life without letting that person know. They simply stop contacting them and fade from their life. The word was first used for dating apps, where people can often display this behavior.

Languages Can Be Hard to Translate, But Translating Your WordPress Website Shouldn’t Be

As we have seen, some languages really can be difficult to transform into another. When you are trying to implement one or more of them on your WordPress website, the last thing you want to do is struggle with the technical aspect of it. For that reason, we want to take a second to talk about how our plugin TranslatePress makes it really easy.

A Single, User-friendly Interface

In TranslatePress, almost everything you do to translate your site happens in the same easy interface.

The preview window on the right allows you to navigate to the pages you want to display in another language. Once there, pick any of the displayed text via the drop-down menu, left and right arrows, or directly from the page.

After that, a new translation box appears on the left side of the screen. Add the translation and click the Save button.

When you do that, the translated text will appear on your website in real-time. Visitors can easily change to their preferred language version with the customizable switcher.

Images Are Translatable, Too

Visuals have a great effect on the cultural relevance of your content and can also include text. For that reason, it is important to also take them into account when translating your site.

TranslatePress also makes localizing your images as easy as translating text. Simply select a visual from the TranslatePress interface and then provide an alternative on the left. Save and you are done.

Automatic Translation Capabilities

As we have seen above, even machine translation struggles with some of the hardest languages out there. However, it can still be a great tool to save time, effort, and money.

That’s why TranslatePress offers automatic translations via Google Translate and DeepL. Switch it on under Settings → TranslatePress → Automatic Translation. Acquire and paste an API key and save to activate it.

With automatic translation switched on, when you choose text from the TranslatePress interface, its translation will automatically appear in the right field. Here, you can adjust it as necessary and then publish it in the usual way.

Multilingual SEO for Search Engine Success

Finally, to rank even in difficult-to-translate languages, TranslatePress Pro comes with a multilingual SEO pack. With it, you can translate your page URLs, SEO titles, meta descriptions, ALT tags, and other important SEO markers.

The SEO Pack also creates multilingual sitemaps and works with most of the popular WordPress SEO plugins.

Start With the Free Plugin

TranslatePress comes in both a free and paid version with three different pricing plans. The free version allows you to add one additional language to your WordPress site. If you want access to the SEO Pack and automatic translation with DeepL, these are included in TranslatePress Pro. The premium version also includes these features:

• Browse as user role – Look at your site as a specific user role in the translation editor.
• User language-specific navigation – Display different menus depending on user language.
• Automatic user language detection – Automatically show your website in a user’s preferred language (via browser settings or location).
• Translator accounts — Make working with translation agencies and freelancers easier by giving them access to your site so they can translate your content directly there.

Here are the details of the paid plans:

So, What Is the Hardest Language to Translate?

Translation really is no easy feat. It’s difficult enough on its own to preserve the meaning of the source material in another language. However, some languages make it especially challenging.

In this post, we have talked about some of the hardest languages to translate. Their grammar, the size of their vocabulary, and other intricacies make these languages especially difficult for translators to convert.

Luckily humans are not alone in these struggles. Machine translation services like Google Translate also fare better with certain languages than others and, if you think about it, often for similar reasons.

However, even universal languages like English can pose a problem. As we have learned above, English, too, contains words that are hard to translate.

So, what do we learn? If you are thinking about translating your website into one of these languages and run into problems, it’s not you. It’s simply difficult. So don’t make your life even harder and use TranslatePress to get the job done.

TranslatePress Multilingual

Make your translation process easier using the most user-friendly website translator.

Get the plugin

Or download FREE version

What languages do you find the hardest to translate? Let us know in the comments below!

The post 5 Hardest Languages to Translate (And What Makes them Difficult) appeared first on TranslatePress.

If this is the first time you are considering working with external translation services, you might have a lot of questions about this process:

• Are there benefits to working with a language provider?
• When does it make sense to do so?
• What kind of translation work can you outsource?
• How do you find a trustworthy translation company or freelancer?
• How much does translation outsourcing cost?
• What difficulties can arise and how do you deal with them?

To help you navigate these question marks, this post will go over the entire process step by step. When you finish it, we want you to feel ready to approach this topic and get the translation help you need.

Why Outsource Your Translations?

The first question you might have is why you should even consider outsourcing your translation. After all, theoretically, you could also take care of it yourself.

Maybe you have someone on staff who speaks your target language or you even speak it yourself. Maybe you have ongoing translation needs and think it would make more sense to hire someone for it full-time.

All of those are valid concerns, so let’s go over the benefits that contracting out your translations can offer and discuss in which cases it makes the most sense.

Better Translation Quality

When working with a professional translator, they are exactly that, a professional. No offense to you or any multilingualists in your company, but just because you speak a language, that doesn’t mean you are qualified to translate it.

As we have examined on this blog before, translating is hard. You have to juggle many linguistic aspects to properly convert something from one language to another. Especially if the content is more ephemeral like marketing messages. For that reason, working with someone who does this day in and day out is often better than attempting to do it yourself.

Conserves Resources

When contracting your translation out to an individual or company, it doesn’t impact the rest of your work processes. You don’t have to set aside your own time or that of someone in your company who might already be busy or working on important things.

Plus, you save on management overhead because you don’t need an overseer for in-house work. Instead, you can leave it at the doorstep of someone else and they get back to you with the results. In the meantime, you can continue working on creating business results in other ways.

Access to Expertise Beyond Translation

Translators not only bring their translation skills but also usually specialize in particular industries or topical areas such as technical, financial, or medical translations.

That’s knowledge laypeople like you and I normally simply don’t have. Imagine translating a contract by yourself and making a mistake. It could have decisive consequences for your business.

Therefore, outsourcing translations is especially useful for matters outside of your realm of knowledge. However, even if it’s about something you do know, you might not always possess the foreign necessary vocabulary to translate it. Here, too, you can benefit from the expert knowledge of skilled contractors.

Reduced Costs

We will talk about pricing in detail further below and, make no mistake, outsourcing translations can be costly. However, if you compare it to creating your own in-house translation processes, most of the time, it’s quite affordable.

If you have a lot of translation needs, building the supporting infrastructure to continuously deal with large localization efforts is expensive. You need to hire people (often one for each language pair you need), train them, and pay their salary, even if there is no translation going on. Plus, they likely need specialized translation tools, which add extra costs.

Finally, there is the management part. Someone needs to keep an eye on what is going on and make sure the translation pipeline is running correctly. All of the above is built in with an external language provider.

Higher Scalability and Flexibility

Besides the costs, there is the question of scalability. If your company grows quickly and your need for translation with it, it can be hard to adapt. Again, you might need to hire additional people, etc.

On the other hand, most translation agencies already have a network of freelancers and translators in place they can tap into. That way, they can react to your growing needs with more flexibility than you could by yourself.

Faster Turnaround Time

Finally, there is translation speed. Again, professional translators have been doing this for a long time and are better at it than laypeople. In addition, they often invest in the latest technology to speed up their translation service such as AI machine translation combined with their own expertise.

However, even outside of machine translation, they simply have the right tools and infrastructure. That means they can get more stuff done in a shorter amount of time. In short, what you would expect from working with a professional in any sort of circumstance. They can simply do it better and faster than you.

So, When Should You Outsource?

From the above, we can deduce different scenarios where it does or doesn’t make sense to outsource to a translation professional vs taking care of the translation yourself. The key points here are the number of languages, the volume, and topical area.

If your translation involves just one language pair, the volume is manageable, and the topic falls within something that you know well (such as translating your own online content) having someone on your staff who is responsible for that can be completely sufficient.

However, if you

• need to translate into a multitude of languages
• and/or deal with a large volume of content
• and/or it’s about something you are next to clueless about (e.g. a legal contract)
• plus, you need to scale quickly

in that case, working with a professional provider is often more time, resource, and cost-effective than building your own translation pipeline.

What Type of Translations Can You Contract Out?

Now, if you were inclined to give translation outsourcing a go, what can you use it for? It turns out pretty much anything. As mentioned above, you can find translators with expertise in almost any area, including but not limited to:

• Websites — Websites are primary communication channels for most businesses. Offering them in different languages to attract a larger audience makes a lot of sense, especially in e-commerce. A good translator will try to fit the translation into the existing layout and design as well as address multilingual SEO. To avoid having to extract the text from the website first, use a specialized plugin like TranslatePress, which allows you to translate directly on-site.
• Documents — For document translation, it really helps if you work with someone who is familiar with the subject matter and has the necessary expertise.
• Apps and software — These are similar to websites in that there needs to be a strong focus on user experience, which the translation has to accommodate. The text might have to be extracted first.
• Videos — Another common area for translation are subtitles, especially after the growing success of streaming services. They are a big part of movies and TV shows that come out in different countries, as is dubbing.
• Marketing materials — Businesses that want to operate globally need to adapt their messaging to local markets. This takes the most creativity as it’s often more about translating a sentiment and not word by word. Plus, it can include images that also need to be localized.

How to Find Translation Companies and Freelancers

The next question is, of course, how to get in touch with people who you can outsource your translation work to? So, let’s talk about that next.

Ask for Recommendations

According to translators themselves, the most common way clients find them is through recommendations.

So, if you are looking for some help with translation outsourcing, your best bet is to ask around your network. This is also very useful if you are looking for an industry expert and ask similar companies as yours.

Do Your Own Research

If your network doesn’t yield any leads, as you can see from the graph above, your next best bets are marketplaces, profiles, or websites of individual translators. Another place you can look for is LinkedIn.

You also need to be clear about what exactly you are seeking. The majority of translators are self-employed. So, if you are only after translation for a single language pair, looking for the presence of individual translators is a good idea.

However, as mentioned above, if you have more complex translation needs, working with an agency with a larger pool of translators can be a better idea.

To give you a leg up, we actually have detailed articles on where to find translation companies, freelancers, and website localization services. The posts tell you exactly where you can find translation professionals and the steps you need to take to hire them. That way, you don’t have to start from zero.

How to Evaluate Potential Candidates

That leaves the question, how do you know who to work with? Well, there are a few ways to evaluate prospective translation service providers.

A good way here is to look at online testimonials. Check ratings on translator marketplaces or review sites like Clutch or Trustpilot. Facebook and Google Maps are also good places to find customer thoughts on businesses. Look especially at negative reviews and how the company has handled them. This speaks to their business practices in general.

Besides that, check the client testimonials provided on the website. If there are a lot of them, that’s a good sign. You can also try to reach out to former clients and ask them about their experience.

Finally, if you find a translator through their own website, pay attention to the site quality. It’s also a good indicator of their professionalism.

How Much Does Translation Outsourcing Cost?

Now, let’s talk about pricing. This depends on a number of factors. One is the rarity of your language pairs. Here is a table with the most common language pairs among translators and interpreters:

Naturally, English-Spanish translation is cheaper than Hungarian-Xhosa because fewer people can do the latter. Language rarity increases the price. In addition, these factors also play a role:

• Work volume — This is a no-brainer. The more work, the more it costs, just like in any other profession. Note, however, that you might get a better overall rate for high-volume jobs.
• Experience of the translator — People who have been in the business for longer and have honed their skills for a long time can ask for better rates because they usually offer better quality and are faster.
• Complexity — Another factor is the difficulty of the work. Especially if it requires specialization, such as for legal documents, it’s usually more expensive.
• Timeline — How fast you need translation also has a bearing on the rate you pay. Rush jobs cost more than those done at a more leisurely pace.

Note that freelancers usually charge per word or per hour. Agencies or LSPs, on the other hand, often ask for a project fee based on the services involved.

So, how much exactly should you expect? Well, because of the complexity, it’s hard to give a definite number. On average, you can expect around $0.10/word or $35-$75 per hour for normal translations. Beyond that, it really scales according to the factors above. Translated has a handy calculator to give you a better impression.

Translation Problems to Anticipate

Unfortunately, working with external language service providers is not always smooth. Just like in other professional relationships, there are problems that can crop up. Besides general translation problems, these are:

• Inconsistent quality — You might have to shop around a bit until you find someone who can sufficiently accommodate your translation needs. This can also happen with an agency, where you can have several translators that provide different levels of quality.
• Lack of control — If you give the translation out of your hands by outsourcing it, it is literally out of your hands. If your chosen provider doesn’t communicate well, it might be difficult to keep track of the progress.
• Insufficient familiarity — An outside provider doesn’t know your business, its goals and voice, your target group, customers, etc. as well as you do. Therefore, they might not be able to take these into account when translating your content.
• Bad culture fit — Culture plays a huge role in translation. Countries with the same language can use it very differently. If this is something that matters to you, be sure to check that your translator not only has the language proficiency but also knows the target country well.
• Privacy concerns — If you give away material to translate that contains proprietary information, it leaves your realm of control. While confidentiality should naturally be part of your translation contract, you can sometimes have a bad experience.

These are just some of the problems that might arise. Be prepared to deal with unexpected issues as this is normal. If you have a good partner to work with, you will be able to overcome them.

What About Machine Translation?

When confronted with the costs of outsourcing translation work, a natural reaction is to think whether it can’t be done for free with machine translation. And, when you compare machine translation with manual translation, speed and price are definitely where machine translation shines.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that, even though machine translation has gotten much better, it still gets stuff wrong all the time. Usually, it can do about 80% of the work. Yet, that still leaves 20% that needs to be corrected and if you don’t invest in that, it can have pretty bad outcomes, especially for things like legal documents. Do want to leave that up to chance?

In addition, the translation quality in machine translation is really dependent on the language pairs. Just like human translators, machine translation is better at more popular languages than at less popular ones. For example, Google Translate is best at English but makes more mistakes in other languages.

Therefore, the less mainstream your needs, the more likely it is that you will need a human translator, at least for editing.

Plus, many translation providers use machine translation themselves in order to deliver faster results. However, they still provide the much-needed oversight to ensure correctness and quality.

So, while machine translation can be enough for simpler tasks, it’s likely not something you should solely rely on, especially for critical content. For that, you need real experts who know what they are doing.

Use TranslatePress for Outsourcing Your Website Translation

When translating your WordPress website with the help of contractors, you want to make the process as easy and painless as possible. In that case, it helps if you have a good partner by your side such as in the form of the TranslatePress translation plugin.

Take Advantage of Translator Accounts

TranslatePress makes working with external language providers very straightforward through translator accounts. They allow you to give translation professionals direct access to your site so they can work on your content immediately.

This eliminates the need to extract all the text on your site, send it over, and then copy and paste the translation back to your website. Everything happens in the same simple interface as the rest of the translation work. This saves a lot of time and effort. Note that translator accounts are part of the premium version.

Do All Your Translation in One Interface

Speaking of interface, almost everything you do in TranslatePress happens in the same main translation interface. It’s very easy to use and get the hang of, even if you’ve never worked with it before.

The preview on the right allows you and anyone else working on your website to navigate to the page you want to convert to another language. From there, you can choose any of the text it contains via the drop-down menu, left and right arrows, or directly from the page.

When you do, a text box appears on the left for the translation. Add it, click the Save button, and the translated text will appear on your website.

Unlike other translation plugins, TranslatePress looks at the rendered HTML content instead of scanning the database. This lets it translate pretty much anything that appears on your site, including widgets, menus, themes, plugins, and more.

Implement Image Translations as Well

With TranslatePress, you also have the possibility to localize your images. Your language service provider can best help you translate any images with text and also give you input on what images might be more culturally appropriate for your target audience.

Any adapted visuals are as easy to implement as text. Simply, select an image from the TranslatePress interface and then choose an alternative on the left. Save and you are done.

Support Your Translators With Machine Translation

As we have learned above, machine translation can be a valid tool for translation outsourcing. While not enough on its own, it does help with speed and you can offer it as assistance to your language service provider.

TranslatePress can do automatic translations via Google Translate and DeepL (the latter requires a license). Switch it on under Settings → TranslatePress → Automatic Translation.

When enabled, any string you or your translator choose from the interface will automatically have its translation show up in the usual field.

Here, it’s easy to make corrections or give it that last bit of polish before submitting it.

Get Your Multilingual SEO on Point

Finally, TranslatePress offers a multilingual SEO pack that allows you to translate your page links, SEO titles, meta descriptions, ALT tags, and other important SEO elements. These options are available to translator accounts as well, so your contractors can also help you optimize your site’s different language versions for search engines.

Use the Right Plan for Your Needs

TranslatePress comes in both a free and paid version with three different pricing tiers. The free version is fully functional to offer one additional language on your WordPress site. However, if you want access to the aforementioned translator accounts and automatic translation with DeepL, TranslatePress Pro is the right solution for you.

Use Translation Outsourcing to Your Advantage

Contracting out your translation work can offer better quality, turnaround time, and cost-effectiveness than doing everything yourself. It especially makes sense when you have high volume needs, your translation requires expert knowledge, and/or you need multiple languages.

Above, we have talked about everything you need to know about translation outsourcing. You know what you can use it for, how to find providers, what costs to expect, issues to anticipate, and if machine translation can play a role.

By now, you hopefully feel ready to give it a try. If you do, using a WordPress plugin like TranslatePress, which accommodates working with external language professionals on your own website can further improve the process.

TranslatePress Multilingual

The easiest way to translate your WordPress website with the help of outsourced translators.

Get the plugin

Or download FREE version

What’s your experience with translation outsourcing? Anything you’d like to add? Let us know in the comments section.

The post Translation Outsourcing: Your Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide appeared first on TranslatePress.

Being prepared for this can make it easier to avoid certain pitfalls. For that reason, in this article, we will take a look at the most common translation issues, from general difficulties over cultural considerations to problems with machine and literary translation.

General Translation Issues to Be Aware Of

First, let’s cover some of the things that often come up as difficulties when translating text.

Dissimilar Language Structures

First up are simple language differences. Languages can be very unlike each other on the most basic level, such as word order. For example, in English, you have subject-verb-object, such as “I love you”. In Turkish, you use subject-object-verb. Here, the sentence is “I you love” or “Ben seni seviorum”.

You can also put an entire sentence into just one word in Turkish. “Apartmandayim” means “I am in the apartment”, a very different structure than English.

As a consequence, translating can come with quite a bit of rearranging, depending on the languages involved. The higher the complexity of their differences, the higher the difficulty of translating them.

Preserving Tone

The tone is a central part of a text. For example, in branding, it’s how you communicate, the voice you give your business. It sets you apart from the competition, helps you connect with customers, and is recognizable in slogans, taglines, ads, and more.

To make sure it translates well in other languages, you have to pay attention to what constitutes tone:

• Diction — Your use of words, whether they are simple or complex.
• Formality — You can use informal or formal tone.
• Rhythm — The flow of words.

Humor, slang, and cultural references can also be part of the tone. All of this is hard to replicate one-to-one in another language and you need a skilled translator to do so. Another option is to opt for a slightly different tone in your target language but then you also need to make sure it is consistent.

Dealing With Compound Words

Compound words are combinations of two or more different words forming a new one. Some of them have a clear meaning directly related to their parts like “toothbrush”. However, their meaning can also be less direct such as in “bookworm”. While it’s not really a worm, it still paints an understandable picture of the person it describes. There are also examples of compound words that have no relation to the object they describe, e.g. in “butterfly”.

Of course, translating compound words like this needs a lot of skill, especially if they don’t exist in the same way in the target language. You also need to know when not to take them literally. By the way, a language well known for its use of long compound words is German.

Translating Two-word Verbs

Two-word verbs are the bane of language learners around the world. Having to memorize the difference between “to break up”, “to break in”, and “to break down” — who doesn’t remember?

On the surface, they are simply a combination of a verb and a preposition. However, together they take on specific meanings that are very different from each other and you have to translate them together, not separately.

Of course, this can also pose a problem with converting them from one language to another. You need to be skilled in both the source and target language to transfer the meaning of two-word verbs correctly.

Words With Multiple Meanings

Another common issue in translation is that words can have more than one meaning, especially depending on where they appear in a sentence. You mainly run into two different cases here:

• Homonyms — These are spelled and pronounced in the same way but can have different meanings. For example, “Scale the fish and put it on the scale”.
• Heteronyms — They look the same but have different meanings and pronunciations. “Tear off a piece of paper and wipe your tear with it” is an example here.

These, too, require knowing both languages involved in the translation very well. Otherwise, you risk making serious mistakes.

Humor and Sarcasm

Humor in general can be a problem in translations because it doesn’t always convert well into another language. That, of course, is especially true for humor that relies on word plays to be funny.

A special case here is sarcasm. It often expresses something that is quite the opposite of the words used. If you were to take or translate it literally, you wouldn’t end up with the intended meaning.

In humor, you also have to take cultural concerns into consideration. Something that might be a joke in one language can be a harsh insult in another. Therefore, you have to work with nuance so that the intent works in both languages. More on that soon.

Name Translations

Translating names can be a challenge. This is especially for names that are originally in non-Latin script. For example, the former leader of China can either be written a “Mao Zedong” or “Mao Tse-Tung” depending on which transliteration you use. In a translation, you have to make a choice and stick with it.

Lack of Knowledge on the Subject Matter

Translation is first and foremost a linguistic endeavor. You have to possess the general knowledge of how to transfer text from one language to another.

However, another consideration is the subject of what you are translating. You need to have sufficient knowledge of what a text is talking about as well to make sure it ends up correct.

Imagine translating a medical or legal text or instructions for how to use dangerous chemicals without having a clue on that topic. The outcome could be disastrous.

That’s why translators often specialize in one or two subject matters. So they have enough knowledge to keep that from happening.

Design and Layout Issues

Especially in website translation, you can often run into problems with layout and design because of translation. Especially Asian, character-based languages are often much shorter than equivalent texts in Western alphabets since each character is an entire word or syllable.

Plus, you have some languages that run from right to left instead of the other way around. Finally, website text is most often accompanied by images, which can also contain text or target specific locales.

All of that has a bearing on the website design and can mess up the original layout. Something to keep in mind when converting your website into other languages.

Expensive and Time-consuming

A more practical problem with translation is that hiring a translator is not always cheap, especially for rarer language pairs. That’s money you could use for other things, like growing your website or business. Or, if you go the cheap way, the quality might not be good enough.

Plus, translation can be time-intensive. After receiving to translation, you have to review it to make sure it’s accurate for your line of work. Machine translation can help but it has its problems in comparison to manual translation.

However, you should also view these as an investment. A properly translated website can bring in new business and expand your market, so it often ends up having a positive ROI.

Cultural Issues in Translation

In addition to general problems, you can also run into translation issues rooted in culture. Here are a few examples.

Culture and Language Are Tightly Connected

First of all, it’s important to keep in mind that language reflects the values, beliefs, customs, and traditions of the people who speak it. That’s why different words can carry different meaning in separate languages. In China, it used to be common to greet each other with “Have you eaten?”, as food wasn’t always available in the past.

As a business, the words you use determine how different cultures perceive your brand, which is why transcreation and localization are so important. There are sometimes taboos and topics that can not be discussed or mentioned. Plus, it can go into other things like colors, images, layout, currency, time and date formats, units of measurement, etc.

Idioms, Expressions, and Slang

Everyday expressions can be very language-specific and pose issues for translation. You often can’t take them literally and many derive from the language’s culture.

You can even have expressions with divergent meanings in dialects of the same language. For example, Australian English is full of words that basically aren’t used in any other country even if they also speak English. Examples are “barbie” (barbecue), “thongs” (for flip-flops), or “Maccas” (for McDonald’s).

It takes a lot of cultural knowledge to be able to understand and translate such expressions. They are one of the most common problems with translation, particular machine translation.

Metaphors and Similes

Metaphors and similes go in the same direction as idioms and expressions, meaning they say something in more visual language. An example of a metaphor is to say that someone “has a heart of gold”, while a simile is to call them “stubborn as a mule”.

These, too, are often language and culture-specific and, therefore, possibly hard to translate. Sometimes equivalents exist. For example, in German, you call someone “as stubborn as a donkey”. However, sometimes you have to come up with something yourself.

Missing Words or Concepts

Another problem you might run into are words to translate that simply don’t exist in another language.

There are many reasons this can happen. It can be a culture-specific problem, such as when the associated thing or action is not permitted or performed in a country. In that case, you often have to find a description for the missing word or another roundabout way of translating it.

Literary Translation Problems

A special area for problems with translations is literary translation. That means, translating literary works like books or poetry. It poses specific challenges because this content is very different from, say, website translation or the translation of business documents.

Preserving the Style of the Source

First of all, literature is creative. A translation not only has to bring across the information it contains but also preserve the art in it, the original tone and intent, atmosphere, and style. It should evoke the same understanding and feeling in the target language as in the original.

That’s why literary translation is often harder to do because it is more artistic. You are basically rewriting a book or other creative work in another language. This is especially true for older works that use the style of a certain epoch. Translators need to be able to emulate that, which can take a lot of research.

So, if you really like a book that was originally written in another language, you actually also admire the translator’s work.

Translating Literary Devices

Besides staying true to the original book, there are also certain parts in literature that make up its “literariness” that you might run into while translating them. A good example here are the poems and songs in Lord of the Rings (and there are many of them). Here’s just one of them:

Cold be hand and heart and bone,
and cold be sleep under stone:
never more to wake on stony bed,
never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead.
In the black wind the stars shall die,
and still on gold here let them lie,
till the dark lord lifts up his hand
over dead sea and withered land.

As a translator of these books, you would have to rewrite them not only in a new language but also preserve their rhyme scheme, length, and rhythm, all the while transporting the same subject matter. Sounds like a tall order? That’s because it is.

There are even more considerations like this, like alliterations, tongue twisters, or when characters talk in different dialects and you need to express that it in another language as well.

Problems With Machine Translation

Machine translation is very common these days as systems have become a lot more sophisticated. However, there are still issues to consider.

Not 100% Reliable

Of course, the first problem is that machine translations is often quite literal. Machines don’t have the same awareness of context and culture as a human translator has. They are also not a subject matter expert in a particular area but more of a general service provider.

For that reason, it’s almost always best to supplement machine translation with a check by a human translator. They can correct any glaring mistakes as well as make more nuanced decisions than an algorithm.

More Suitable for Certain Types of Content Than Others

Because of the problems with accuracy, machine translation is best suitable for less complex types of content. Things like business content, website content, etc., where the style or character of the work is less important. A machine often simply can not perform the same work as a literary translator.

Yet, machine translation still has a place, especially for speeding up the initial process. It’s also great for simpler content and content where 100% accuracy is not that important. Check out our list of machine translation software to find the right tool for you.

You Know Who Doesn’t Have a Problem With (Website) Translation? TranslatePress!

Because translations can come with problems, the last thing you want to do is struggle with implementing them. At least for your WordPress website, the tool we would like to recommend for that purpose is our TranslatePress plugin. Here is why.

Do All Your Translation in One Interface

First of all, TranslatePress offers 100% translation completeness. It allows you to translate anything from your website content over widgets and menus to themes, plugins, and more.

That’s because, unlike other translation plugins, TranslatePress looks at the rendered website HTML for content instead of scanning the database. This lets it translate pretty much anything that appears on your site.

For that reason, almost everything you do happens in the same main translation interface.

The preview on the right allows you to navigate to the page you want to convert to another language. From there, you can choose any of the text it contains via the drop-down menu, left and right arrows, or directly from the page.

Use the text box on the left side of the screen to add your translation. When you click the Save button, the translated text will appear on your website.

Translate Your Images As Well

With TranslatePress you can also localize your images. As we have learned above, these can contain text that needs to be translated or be specific to different regions. Localizing your visuals works the same way as for text. Select an image from the TranslatePress interface and then choose an alternative on the left. Save and you are done.

Automatic Translation Options

TranslatePress can do automatic translations via Google Translate and DeepL (the latter requires a license). Switch it on under Settings → TranslatePress → Automatic Translation.

When enabled, any string you choose from the interface will automatically have its translation present in the usual field.

By the way, in the Pro version, you can also create dedicated translator accounts to work with freelancers and agencies and have them translate your web content.

Ready for Multilingual SEO

Finally, TranslatePress offers a multilingual SEO pack. With it, you can translate your page links, SEO titles, meta descriptions, ALT tags, and other important SEO elements.

The SEO Pack also creates multilingual sitemaps you can submit to search engines. Plus, it works with most of the popular WordPress SEO plugins.

Use the Free Plugin to Get Started

TranslatePress comes in both a free and paid version with three different pricing tiers. The free version is fully functional to offer one additional language on your WordPress site. If you want access to the aforementioned SEO Pack, translator accounts, and automatic translation with DeepL, these are included in TranslatePress Pro.

Besides that, the premium version gives you access to the following features:

• Browse as user role – Lets you look at your site as a specific user role in the translation editor.
• User language-specific navigation – The premium version allows you to use different menus depending on user language.
• Automatic user language detection – Automatically show your website in a user’s preferred language (via browser settings or location).

You can see more details below.

Learn to Embrace Translation Problems

Translation seems like a straightforward thing from the outside, especially if you are used to the instantaneousness of machine translation. Simply convert words from one language to another, right? However, if you dive deeper, it quickly becomes apparent that there is a lot of nuance involved in properly translating something.

Above, we have covered a few common issues that can arise in different areas, including cultural issues and problems in literary translations. Hopefully, by now you have a better understanding of what can happen as well as a stronger appreciation for the art of translation.

In addition, if you are looking for a way to translate your website, we hope you give TranslatePress a try.

TranslatePress Multilingual

TranslatePress is the easiest way to translate your WordPress site. It's fast, won't slow down your website, works with ANY theme or plugin and it's SEO friendly.

Get the plugin

Or download FREE version

What common problems with translations have you observed? Please tell us about your experience in the comments below.

The post 18 Common Problems with Translation (That You Should Know About) appeared first on TranslatePress.

Why should you consider doing that?

Well, the GDP is a measure to describe the market value of all goods and services produced during a specific time frame by a certain entity, usually a country or countries. It’s an indicator of economic health and buying power.

Picking languages for your website by their respective GDP is a way to try and tap into the economy of the people who speak it. The higher the GDP, the better the earning potential for your business. Sounds logical, doesn’t it? So let’s examine if it holds true and if choosing what languages to translate your site into based on language GDP makes sense.

Languages Can Be a Business Asset or Risk Factor

In business, languages matter, especially if you are competing and presenting yourself online. In 1996, an estimated 80 percent of online content was in English. While English is still the most prominent language online, its dominance has significantly declined since then. In 2024, it’s more around 54% and other languages have increased in importance.

In addition, the above doesn’t take into account the language of the people who actually surf the web. Here, the difference is more pronounced still.

As you can see above, the number of English-speaking Internet users, while still the majority, only makes up about 26% of total users. And those numbers are from 2020. Other languages have likely added a lot more people to their online ranks since then than English did.

Use Multilingualism to Your Advantage

In short, the web has become a lot more linguistically diverse. As a consequence, it makes a lot of sense to offer your website in more than one language. Doing so allows you to reach more people, appeal to a wider audience, and sell across language barriers and borders.

Don’t believe that this could make any difference? According to a 2020 study:

• 75% of consumers want product information in their native language
• 40% won’t buy in another language
• 65% prefer content in their native language
• 73% want reviews of products in their own language

So, as you can see, the language that you offer on your website can very well have a big impact on your business. Therefore, you definitely want to speak the language of those people who might be interested in your offers.

However, at the same time, you also want to appeal to people who have the means to purchase your products. For that, it also makes sense to look at languages in terms of economic possibilities. So, let’s do exactly that now.

Business Languages of the Future, Ordered By GDP

Now that we know why it’s a good idea to offer your website in more than one language, which should you choose based on economic indicators? As mentioned in the introduction, one way to look at it is from the perspective of GDP. It’s a good proxy for how well your language audience earns and their purchasing power.

There is no official government source for this information. However, there are people online who use publicly available data to compile it. The most detailed version I could find was this paper by Konstantin G Filimonov. I’ll be using it as my main source for this post.

According to his writing, these are the top 20 most valuable languages by GDP:

Here is the same thing again, for the top 10 as a bar graph.

And here is a pie chart showing the share of the top 10 languages in global GDP.

What Can We Learn From Those Numbers?

When you look at the above, there are some things that stand out.

English is at the Top, Again

For one, the fact that English leads the list is probably not super surprising. The group of countries with English as their native language has some of the biggest economies in the world, including the USA, Canada, the UK, and Australia. So, no wonder it leads the pack.

However, keep in mind that the statistics above are for native speakers only. In addition, English is also the first foreign language to learn in many countries. For that reason, the group of total English speakers in the world is much higher, about 1.456 billion. That means, if you consider English as a second or third language, the share of worldwide GDP that it includes is even greater.

Languages Per GDP Reflect the World Economy

Generally, if you think a little about the state of the world economy, the top five or even top ten languages are not all that surprising. If you think about the countries where these languages are spoken, many of them are well known for their economic output. That’s why, the top 10 languages make up 75% of worldwide GDP.

You might wonder why India didn’t make it higher on the list, with its impressive economic growth in recent decades. The fact that the country has several different native languages that need to be accounted for separately always reduces India’s rank in these kinds of lists. If you count all of its main languages together, it would end up ranking much better.

It’s also interesting to see that some languages are quite high on the list that are spoken by a relatively small group of people. Japanese is one such example, as is German, which isn’t even in the top 10 of the most spoken languages worldwide.

Asian Languages Are on the Rise

Asian countries have been adding Internet users over the last couple of years and still have a ways to go. Their bigger presence online is going hand in hand with stronger GDP growth. Chinese, Hindi, Bengali, Malay-Indonesian, and Thai already show a strong presence in languages by GDP.

If you look at the source for the table above, you can also see that Vietnamese, Punjabi, Javanese, Tagalog, and several other Indian languages and dialects follow in places 20 to 40.

What Does This Mean for Your Website?

Alright, now it’s time to discuss the consequences of this information for your web presence.

Your Website Likely Needs More Than One Language

With the diversification of online languages in general as well as the variety among those with the strongest GDP, offering a multilingual experience for your customer is no longer optional. You very likely already have customers coming to your site who would prefer to consume it in another language.

One of the easiest ways to find that out is to check your web analytics. They can tell you the locations your visitors are coming from as well as the languages they use for their browsers.

If you at all plan to serve these customers, strongly consider welcoming them linguistically on your website.

English Gives You the Most Bang for Your Buck

Furthermore, if you want to make your website or online shop available to the largest number of additional people, English is the way to go. Due to its widespread use, it allows you to appeal to the largest group of language speakers, not just native speakers. In addition, it allows you to tap into the language with the highest GDP out there, so it’s a double whammy and, therefore, a bit of a no-brainer.

At the same time, the online market in English-speaking countries is a lot more saturated. It has the highest share of people with Internet access, so markets are well-established and harder to break into.

Still, if your website is not already in English, and you want to appeal to a wider but not necessarily specifically local audience, going for English is almost always a good idea.

Adjust the Languages to Your Business Goals

Just because some languages come with a favorable GDP, that doesn’t mean you have to support all of them. Consider what makes sense for your business objectives and markets and make decisions from there.

For example, what countries are you operating in? There is no use offering your website in the language of a country you don’t ship to, no matter how much economic output they show. It would only let you attract people you won’t be able to help in the end.

Another question is, how good is the English education in the market of your choice? If you already offer your website in English and want to serve a locale where people’s skills in this language are excellent, that might be enough. For example, this applies to many Scandinavian and other Western European countries.

Again, look at your customer data and website analytics. See where different language audiences are already coming from and how they behave on your website. Decide from there.

Be Aware of Your Market

There are some special cases of markets where it’s sort of decided for you which languages you definitely have to offer on your website. Several countries have more than one official language. Examples include Switzerland (German, Italian, French, Romansh), Spain (Spanish, Catalan, Basque, Galician), but also South Africa, Canada, and Belgium.

So, if you are in one of those markets, some choices will basically be made for you.

However, adding languages for your market can also be a strategic decision. For example, if your business operates near the border of a neighboring country and you regularly have economic tourists coming over that way, localizing your online offer for this target group can make a lot of sense. That way, you have a higher chance to show up for search queries when they plan their trip.

Use TranslatePress to Translate Your Website Into the Most Profitable Business Languages

Looking at languages by GDP is a good start when considering what to translate your website into. Once you have made a decision, however, you should make adding them to your WordPress site as easy as possible. To facilitate this, at this point, we want to humbly suggest using TranslatePress for that purpose. Here is why.

A Single, Easy-to-Use Interface

In TranslatePress, most translations happen in the same easy interface.

Use the preview on the right to navigate to the page you want to convert to another language. After that, you can choose any of the strings on it either via the drop-down menu, left and right arrows, or directly from the page.

Doing so opens up a new text box on the left side of the screen to add your translation to. When you are done, simply click the Save button to make the translated text appear on your website.

Translate Images in Addition to Text

TranslatePress also allows you to localize your images. This is especially important if your visuals contain text that needs translation. Besides that, it can also make sense to use different images for different regions in order to be more culturally appropriate.

Either way, you can simply select an image for translation from the TranslatePress interface and then provide an alternative on the left. It will appear automatically in the same way as translated text.

Use Automatic Translation to Save Time, Money, and Effort

TranslatePress offers automatic translations via Google Translate and DeepL (you’ll need a license for the second option). Switch it on under Settings → TranslatePress → Automatic Translation. After that, acquire and paste an API key, save, and you are pretty much done.

With automatic translation enabled, when you choose a string from the interface, you will automatically find its translation in the respective field.

Multilingual SEO for Search Engine Success

Finally, TranslatePress comes with a multilingual SEO pack in the premium version. It allows you to translate your page links, SEO titles, meta descriptions, ALT tags, and other important SEO markers.

The SEO Pack also creates multilingual sitemaps to submit to search engines. Plus, it works with most of the popular WordPress SEO plugins.

What Will Be Your Website’s Most Valuable Business Language?

Looking at languages by GDP gives you another perspective on which languages to add to your multilingual website. Taking into account the economic power of your target audience definitely makes sense when trying to run a business.

English is probably a good choice in most cases, both for economic reasons as well as for its status as the universal language. After that, you need to think through your business goals, market, and the type of business you are running. Maybe getting in on emerging markets in Asia is a move that would work, maybe focusing on a local language is a better idea.

Whatever you decide, adding more languages to your business website is most likely a good idea. Once you have settled on your choices, consider TranslatePress to implement them.

TranslatePress Multilingual

TranslatePress is the easiest way to translate your WordPress site. It's fast, won't slow down your website, works with ANY theme or plugin and it's SEO friendly.

Get the plugin

Or download FREE version

Were you surprised by the list of languages by GDP above? Any language you were expecting to see or not? Let us know in the comments!

The post Top Languages by GDP in 2024: What to Choose for Your Website appeared first on TranslatePress.