I did some research and looked for every WordPress translation plugin I could find – and came up with some dead links, abandoned sites, and one de-facto standard for WordPress translations, Angsuman’s Translator Plugin Pro. I challenge anyone to find something better for WordPress translations – there’s nothing that even comes close. There are two versions, Translator Plugin “Pro” that does translation in 14 languages, and “Gold” which does translation in 32 languages. The version “Pro” is the version I purchased, which is more than adequate for me. The “Pro” version costs $30, and “Gold” is $100. In addition Translator Plugin Pro is available for blogging platforms and web sites other than WordPress – check their site to see what else you could be using it for.

Translator Plugin Pro Features

  • Search engine friendly indexable URL’s that are bookmarkable
  • Multiple “virtual sites”. Once a user reads a page in a language like “Italian”, every link they click and page they read on your site will be in Italian – they may never realize your site is written in another language (unless you mention it)
  • Caching engine stores translated pages for quick retrieval and pages don’t have to be translated every time
  • Four translation engines are used, and if one fails, it will “failover” to one of the other four
  • Real time stats of hit translated pages
  • Selectively turn on or off the languages you select
  • Exclude any content from translation
  • Ability to display content on only translated pages
  • Heavily documented, easy to use, full API available

Those are some pretty good features, but I want you to think about the first one a minute. Translator Plugin Pro will translate your WordPress blog in 14 different languages, and that’s 13 more other than the language you blog in. Let’s say you have 100 posts and pages. Right now in search results you (hopefully) have 100 indexed pages. If you had this plugin installed every page would be available in 13 additional languages. 13 languages times 100 pages means now you have 1,300 additional listings in the search engines. Do you know of any other plugin that will increased your search engine listings by a factor of 13?

Once I had made the decision to purchase the plugin, I went to their order page and paid $30 via paypal. Then I waited until the next day – when they emailed my custom version with my license key for my domain intact. The $30 is for a one-domain license only (with free lifetime upgrades). Once installed and activated I setup the sidebar widget with the flag icons you see now, just click on one for a translated version of a page.

If you decide to purchase and install this plugin (and I think if you are blogging for the long haul – you’d be a fool not to have this plugin), at first you will notice that it may not work the way you think. All pages aren’t immediately available for translation. I’ve had my version installed for 3 days now, and these are my stats –

translated pages stats Surprised? First of all, translated pages aren’t cached until someone calls for it to be translated for the first time. The translation process is very intensive, and if your pages are really long (like some of mine) you may get a time out the first so many times. Over time more and more and more pages will get translated and cached as needed, until eventually your entire blog will be cached, every page and post 13 additional times.

So this is one of the few plugins that works well over time, but at first it take some time to get your entire site translated and cached. As times goes on translated request will go up, translated pages in cache will go up, and the cache hits should go up to ove 90%, and the misses will be less than 10%. For the moment I’m letting my site get cached, and the only additional thing that I’ve done is to add the code to my single.php and page.php for a custom message on only translated pages. It looks like this…

translated single post

It tells the reader on every translated page they’re reading a translated version and the language the original was written in. I’ll add a little style to make that stand out a bit more soon. It seems to me that it would be very easy to hack this code just a slight bit so you could actually place a custom ad for each and every language translation. So now having multiple language versions of your blog could also mean multiple monetization possibilities as well! As soon as I figure that out – you can be there will be a follow up post!

Again to recap – there are other ways to do this for free whether by plugin or script, but none have the capabilities of Translator Plugin Pro – especially not the caching feature. Now, you’ll notice that in this article I haven’t really talked about any “cons” to translating blog pages. Well, I did mention one, the fact that for first-requested or long pages at first these request may time out. Once translated and cached, nearly all translated page requests should generate results. I’ve read a lot of comments about using (or not using) translation software on web sites. Many people think that it shouldn’t be done since the translation quality can be poor. Let me be clear, reading a translated page will never be the same as the original post in the original language. But readers should be able to get the gist of the post. You are providing a service to allow people to possibly read and better understand your blog in their native language. They wouldn’t be clicking on one of the flags for translation if they didn’t have a need to read it in their native language in the first place.

You have to judge whether or not translation is right for your blog, but I really can’t think of any way it could hurt. And the nominal fee of $30 is about the cost of a decent meal. As always, if you have something to add to this post, or a question – please comment now!

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