The Internet has opened the doors for blog owners to do business and connect with people overseas. Distance is no longer a barrier, but language is. If you want to connect with people in different countries, you can tear down the language barrier by creating a multilingual WordPress blog. You won’t have to translate the blog on your own. Instead, you will install a plugin that will translate the blog for you.
Multilingual Plugin
While there are several different plugins available, the WPML plugin is the easiest to use. If you use this plugin, your post will contain the different translations. Then, WordPress will select the translation that needs to display when someone goes to your blog.
You will choose the languages that you want to include. Thus, if you don’t want to operate in certain countries, you just won’t include those languages. That way, you will have control over who can read your blog. If someone from a country that you didn’t list tries to read you blog, it will display in English instead of in the reader’s language. However, if someone from a country you did include goes to your blog, it will display in the person’s native language.
Comments
The plugin also translates user comments so you can read them. For instance, if someone comments on your blog in French, you can use the plugin to translate it to English. That means you will be able to communicate with your audience, regardless of where they live or what language they speak.
Compatibility
WPML is compatible with most professional WordPress themes, so you don’t have to worry about losing functionality. Your theme should still look the same once the plugin is installed. You won’t see any changes. The only changes will occur when someone from another country accesses your blog. Then, the plugin will change the display language. Other than that, everything will look the same.
Is this Right For You?
If you think you have something to offer people in other countries, give this plugin a try. Then, keep an eye on your statistics to find out if it is helping you reach a new market. You might find that you are getting more customers in other countries. If that’s the case, you can even think about targeting your pay-per-click campaign to other countries, or trying to interact with people from other countries on the social networks.
Look at this as a test. If you pass this test, you will know that you can continue marketing in other countries.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure to subscribe to WP Mayor’s RSS feed.
4 Responses
Jean is right, WPML has as major flaw… lack of automatic translation…
Beside this point is not easy to use compared to Transposh.
Luis, I did say that WPML does not do automatic translations, however I do not consider that a flaw. The developers of WPML can easily implement this feature, however it is not the aim of this plugin to automatic translations. WPML aims to be (and in my opinion currently is) the best plugin for manual translations and handling of several languages on a WordPress website.
Interesting plugin… though I’m curious to know how good/accurate the translation is. Most of the time with other auto translations tools the site visitor gets turned off by the site cuz it is so hard for them to read and make sense out of the content.
WPML doesn’t do automatic translations, you have to do them yourself or get a translator for the job.