The two main contenders as best multilanguage plugins for WordPress are WPML and QTranslate. If you want a quick answer to which one comes out on top, I would say go for WPML. If you have enough time to give them a test drive, by all means do so and judge for yourself which one works best for your needs.
WPML
If you want the most fully featured multilanguage plugin solution for WordPress, your best bet is WPML.
WPML makes it possible to turn WordPress blogs multilingual in a few minutes with no knowledge of PHP or WordPress. Its advanced features allow professional web developers to build full multilingual websites.
- Turns a single WordPress site into a multilingual site.
- Powerful translation management, allowing teams of translators to work on multilingual sites.
- Built-in theme localization without .mo files.
- Comments translation allows you to moderate and reply to comments in your own language.
- Integrated professional translation (optional feature for folks who need help translating).
- Includes CMS navigation elements for drop down menus, breadcrumbs trail and sidebar navigation.
- Robust links to posts and pages that never break.
WPML is also offering full integration with Gravity Forms, so you can easily translate all the forms on your site as well.
ICanLocalize, the creators of WPML, offer reliable commercial support for WPML. This support provides timely and dependable help directly from the developers.
QTranslate
An alternative to WPML is QTranslate. It is also a valid multilanguage plugin that works a bit differently to WPML.
qTranslate makes creation of multilingual content as easy as working with a single language. Here are some features:
- qTranslate Services – Professional human and automated machine translation with two clicks
- One-Click-Switching between the languages – Change the language as easy as switching between Visual and HTML
- Language customizations without changing the .mo files – Use Quick-Tags instead for easy localization
- Multilingual dates out of the box – Translates dates and time for you
- Comes with a lot of languages already builtin! – English, German, Simplified Chinese and a lot of others
- No more juggling with .mo-files! – qTranslate will download them automatically for you
- Choose one of 3 Modes to make your URLs pretty and SEO-friendly. – The everywhere compatible
?lang=en, simple and beautiful/en/foo/or nice and neaten.yoursite.com - One language for each URL – Users and SEO will thank you for not mixing multilingual content
qTranslate supports infinite languages, which can be easily added/modified/deleted via the comfortable Configuration Page. All you need to do is activate the plugin and start writing the content.
Comparing WPML and QTranslate
qTranslate stores all languages alternatives for each post in the same post, whereas WPML manages multilingual posts in one post per language. Translations in WPML are then linked together, indicating that one page is the translation of another. Each of this plugin has advantages and disadvantages.
Here is a comparison between qTranslate and WPML:
Advantages of WPML:
- The database contents for posts remain unmodified (easy install and uninstall).
- Everything gets translated by default. If a post includes custom fields, they’re attached to that post, so they are already associated with the language.
- Other plugins that analyze contents (like related posts) keep working correctly.
- Great support from an established company employing more than 15 people.
Disadvantages of WPML:
- More complex architecture. The plugin needs to hook to many WordPress functions and filter them so that only contents that matches the language is returned.
- Additional tables are required normally, to hold the translation grouping.
Advantage of qTranslate:
- Side by side editing is easily implemented.
- Less things to break. There are no additional tables and much fewer things to modify in WordPress.
Disadvantages of qTranslate:
- In order to create multilingual contents, the user needs to insert the language tags manually, to everything the plugin doesn’t hook to. Example: Adjust MicroKid Related Posts with qTranslate Plugins
- Uninstall can be complicated, as the database needs to be cleaned from multilingual contents.
In SEO terms, the main advantage of WPML over qTranslate is the URL rewriting. With qTranslate, you create a page, name it and every translated version will contain the same URLs elements.
E.g. www.islecreative.com/translation-french and www.islecreative.com/fr/translation-french
With WPML, every page can have a unique URLs which you can decide
E.g. www.islecreative.com/translation-french and www.islecreative.com/fr/traduction-francais
Furthermore, I find WPML more user-friendly. All the translated pages are listed on the Page section, and the translated versions remain accessible whenever a page is being edited.
Have you used any of these two plugins? Have something to add to the above review? Leave a comment below!
Remember that when building a multilanguage website you can also pick a suitable WordPress multilingual theme from our review.
I have used Qtranslate (see http://marcopololand.ca) and like it very much. Of course it relies on the website owner to enter everything in multiple languages – but it automatically switches to display an available language if content isn’t there for the user’s choice and indicates this to them. The language tags are a great feature – but do require some manual effort and the syntax can be a little tricky – the biggest problem is that they don’t seem to be supported within plugins right out-of-the-box – I’m developing a reservation system plugin and the language tags display verbatim – still need to figure out how to solve this problem.
Have you taken a look at the Google AJAX Translation plugin? This may be the simplest solution for those that just want approximate translations available to their users. I haven’t used it yet but plan to make it standard in my website implementations if it works ok.
Thanks for your input Brad, Qtranslate seems to be a valid alternative, especially now that WPML is becoming a paid plugin.
Will definitely take a look at Google AJAX Translation, and update the post accordingly.
hello.. i have problem with mod_rewrite by qtranslate in pre-pathlish … you have code with .htaccess, this archive is generic, but not compatible with qtanslate.. y like two lenguage (spanish /es/ and english /en/)
thanks
Best to ask for a solution in the WordPress forums, be sure to tag your question with the name of the plugin.
It is worth noting that due to the complexity of WPML it can at times triple the number of databse queries per page load. It is much heavier than qTranslate.
WPML probably has more DB queries than qTranslate, however they have improved the performance significantly lately.
nice working wpml is the best.
I was using WPML but now sinces 3.1 is a commercial plugin
http://wpml.org/purchase/
I will try Qtranslate, thanks for the post
Awesome blog Jean :3
Thanks, glad you like the blog
I’ve also been using WPML for couple of sites but since it became commercial I’m looking for an alternative. I don’t like qTranslate and other plugins because of the way they manage the translations.
I’m now trying to solve multi-language sites by using WordPress Network (previously WordPressMU). You can use subdomains or sub-directories (en.domain.com or domain.com/en/) for switching languages, a single user can access more sites from WP 3.1 admin menu, …. So far it looks better than paying $80 for WPML
That’s a nifty solution Lenart, I think it’s also fair to say that WPML has improved significantly in terms of performance and features since it became commercial. Personally I find WPML well worth the money, since the cost is usually absorbed by the client anyway. However as always, the more options we have the better.
i wana to uninstall QTranslate plugin, but i don’t know how to.
Presently I have a non-WordPress multi-lingual website in 8 languages that I’m thinking of moving to WordPress. One problem is that I have translators working on 10 additional languages—2 of those being Farsi and Hebrew. Do any of the present multi-language plugins for WordPress handle right-to-left well on the same page with left-to-right? Thanks. Rick
Hi Rick, WPML should be able to handle that without any problems.
Hi Rick Yes WPML handle this perfect , you get the best support and recently there is an article about right to left direction in combination with ltr sites http://wpml.org/2011/06/creating-right-to-left-rtl-wordpress-sites/, i work with it on 4 different websites i need in Hebrew and english and german.
WPML ist worth its money! And i changed from Qtranslate to WPML and its a big difference mainly if you need rtl support!
also there is a very good plugin for rtl direction for the Editor http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-rtl/
Susanne
I agree with Susanne, WPML is by far the most mature multilanguage plugin for WordPress today, and well worth the money.
qtranslate doesn t integrates with formbuilder and some other plugin and now i’m f*cked i can t uninstall it… WP sucks when it comes to multilanguage and i don t know why people still bother with WP just because it is a simple CMS… if you want complete multilanguage solutions choose joomla and joomfish
if anyone knows how i can make qtranslate work with formbuilder or any other easy to handle free form please contact me guys… i need to finish this stupid project and i m stuck on the forms translations
Could you shed any light on how many queries WPML adds for you please?
I tested qtranslate by using in my footer.php and compared both with and without the plugin activated. And it’s fast, adding no additional database queries! But I’m still considering WPML given it’s ability to translate urls as you mentioned (e.g. /characteristicas, instead of /es/features).
Would be curious to hear how WPML affects your performance.
It didn’t publish my code, should have read: echo get_num_queries();
The best way to check is to install a plugin like ‘Debug Queries’ and test WPML on your installation, as it might also depend on what WPML modules you choose to install. I have not encountered any particular performance issues with WPML and it’s a very good platform. It has become more polished since it became a paid plugin.
That’s a good method too. I was just hoping to get a sense of relatively how many queries it adds on a site before shelling out the $80 just to test that. Thought maybe that was something you’d have already tested after buying WPML or might want to test, with and without the plugin active. It’d be an interesting comparison, given from my test we know qtranslate adds 0 queries.
The WPML plugin is the best but it’s not a free plugin now
Good stuff. But I think QTranslate is cool. Will try that out..
Thanks. Definitely try them both out and see what works best for you.
Hi, I am very pleased with the plugin.. does exactly what i wanted. Thanks for share!
Welcome!
thanks admin. hope this still works in wp 3.2.1
Nice post Jean, I want to mention to your readers that we have a WP translation plugin which is one of the best ones out there. It is guaranteed to increase traffic and ad revenues. It is also one of the only plugins that does not rely on the Google API. Google is terminating the free translate API this year and most of the plugins that rely on Google will not be able to offer all of those languages. Our system is based on a self-owned server and software license and we are not dependent on anyone.
You can check some of the software implemented in our plugin on http://webtranslator.gts-translation.com
Thanks for the tip David!
did the QTranslate plugin support RTL lang also ?
can i change css file for each lang ?
Best Regards,
Yaniv
It should yes, also take a look at this post:
http://www.kadimi.com/en/wordpress-ltr-rtl-556
hi.
i can’t seem to find the information, can you tell me whether WPML can translate product tags in WP-eCommerce?
I’ve tried with qTranslate and it works fine, except for product tags as the setup page for these tags removes the specific tags you define languages with in qTranslate.
Not sure about that, you’d better ask in the WP Ecommerce support forum.
Hi, nice post and thanks for sharing. I’m pitching a service to a potential client, this being the very first multilanguage site, so I’m quite new in how and what goes on behind the scenes of such a site. From what I’ve read, it may be the best and fail-safe way to just go with a multisite solution. It may be a bit more difficult/time consuming for populating the sites, but all in all, different sites (subdomain, folder whatever) offers tons of advantages for SEO, so I guess I’ll go with WPMS approach and see what happens.
Sensible approach too, let us know how it goes.
well, for the past hour or so I’ve set up the multisite (or network, whatever you prefer), and here’s what I’ve learned in the process:
1. Install all plugins you’d like Before you enable the multisite
2. Ideally the .com page should be just a language selector pointing to the networked sites, because the main site, the .com one, will get URLs like site.com/blog/…, while the others can be configured to have the URLs without the “blog” in them. Maybe there’s a way to get rid of this slug, but I’m still learning things and reporting as I do
3. Get a Multisite plugin for easier management of the sites. I’m still researching which one will do things best. As I’m doing this for a client, the primary concern is to find a plugin that will make publishing new posts as easy as possible. The default option of switching between the networked sites just doesn’t seem elegant.
4. Nor sure, which one will be point 4, but Im darn sure there will be other conclusions as I go down the road.
The benefits of multisite vs. plugin? Well, first off, it’s completely free. Then, it is perfect for SEO as you can tweak everything from category slugs and descriptions to separate meta elements. Then, I intend on having the logo/slogan images done in separate languages, as well as some images with text on the home page and other landing pages. This level of fine tuning is hard to achieve with plugins I think, because the multisite approach is like having separate sites altogether, even though it’s a single WP instal.
Cons: I’m not sure how if and how things would develop if for some reason one of the languages goes south, and how that would affect the others, since they’re all working from a single WP install. Then, I’m still not sure if and how some plugins will work with a multisite install. The first thing that comes to mind is what if there’s a premium plugin (like one ecommerce plugin I bought) and how that will work (if at all) on the different language sites.
I’m sure I’ll find other pros and cons, but as I said previously, just reporting as I do things.
FYI the test sites are:
http://www.mebel-lacka.webmaxformance.com Main site, soon to be language selector
http://www.mebel-lacka.webmaxformance.com/en English version
http://www.mebel-lacka.webmaxformance.com/sq Albanian
http://www.mebel-lacka.webmaxformance.com/mk Macedonian (cyrilic) version
The main point that I couldn’t solve by sticking to a single regular no-plugin multilanguage site is the navigation. I thought of just using the category-based url and use three sets of sub categories for each language, but then… filtering of pages, meta elements, navigation-this all could be in a single language. So the multisite solved this problem very elegantly, as well as SEO issues, which were importat to the client.
Hope this helps.
Thanks so much for taking the time to report back, I’m sure this will be helpful for someone else. Please let us know when there are more updates, wish you best of luck with the rest of this project.
Hi,
I need to creat a multilanguge website. My defaut language is italian but one of the laguages needs to be bulgarian. As I had a problem with writting in cyrillic letter with pevious plugin i have installed and I read that many people actully have this problem. I would like to know whether WPML or Qtranslate support cyrillic letters?
Tnak you!
from my experience with cyrilic, what creates problems is the database creation process. My hosting provider has a default setting for each new database to be created in Sweedish (no idea why, since they’re actually located in Chicago), and I had to contact tech support to change the database in UTF-8, back them up, and restore them again, only to make them functioning properly and allow for cyrilic support.
So, from what I know, the issue isn’t with the plugins, but with the database character coding set. UTF-8 supports cyrilic, I’m using it and works just fine. Also, make sure you have the obvious things done, eg. installed a Bulgarian keyboard on your system.
Hope this helps.
As far as I know WPML supports Cyrillic, not sure about Qtranslate.
back to report the progress with my multilanguage approach, I’ve set up the network, and everything works like a charm. I pitched the suggestion to my potential client, so we’ll see how things work and if he decides to hire me. But even if he doesn’t this multi-site setup has given me some cool ideas, so it was definitely worth the time to play with multisite setups.
Cool thanks for reporting back, and good luck with the pitch.
I really like WPML translation Plugin, and I definitely try it..
By the way great post and thanks for sharing..
Welcome.
Welcome!
I have tested a lot of the free translators such as Google Ajax Translator mentioned earlier. As my wife speaks fluent Armenian and Russian I asked her to check the translated versions of her English jewellery tutorials blog in those and she said she could barelyu understand any of it. But if you translate a world news website such as bbc to those languages using Google translate it’s more than eligible.
I guess choosing between free and paid translation services also depends on your site content is what i’m suggesting.
Thanks a lot, great help. I will go with the WMPL too.
Welcome julia.
I am looking at WPML for a small site. I’m trying to find out if it is possible to tweak all onpage elements of a translated posts in the same way that we would for a normal untranslated page (title tags, url slugs, custom menu labels, headers etc). Do you have any advice on these?
Also quite a few people have mentioned the number of database queries it may make – what is the significance of this? Does it mean it’ll slow down the website completely?
Yes most onpage elements can be tweaked, for details it’s better to ask the WPML authors directly and they’ll be able to help you on your specific case. As for queries definitely it won’t slow down your website completely, you might notice a few more milliseconds for loading, but you should also be using a caching plugin, in which case the performance hit will be non existent or very minimal.
to avoid slowdowns you can always use a caching plugin. In my latest project (www.palmbeachcustoms.com) that is image-heavy, the load time before caching was about 5 seconds. After w3 Cahce, the site loads for about 3 seconds. That’s 70% increase, and it takes about 15 minutes to make the caching work properly.
As for on-site seo, my take is to always go with a multisite install. You can tweak till Jesus comes and you won’t cause a network-wide speed issues. With multisite, you can configure each language as a separate site, which gives you full control over everything. Yeah, the down side is that you will spend more time, but considering SEO benefits… I think it’s worth the effort.
My 2 cents.
Excellent tips Igor, we’re seeing more people go for the multisite install.
Instead of multisite to try ManageWP (http://managewp.com/) –
ManageWP helps you manage all your WordPress sites from one location, keeping them updated and secure + using WPML plugin for multi-language. Of course, all of this is not completely free, but if someone wants the best of the best and have some money – this is a perfect combination.
Thank you for comparing the both plugins, definitely helps to select the perfect one.
Dear all,
i will use two languages RTL & LTR with Qtranslate
first language English(LRT) the pages come like this:
Page1 Page2 Page3 Page4 (Left layout)
Second language Arabic or Hebrew (RTL)
Page4 Page3 Page2 Page1 (Right layout)
how can i do that in Qtranslate?
Best Regards
I have used qtranslate before.
I would like to add another disavantage I found on qTranslate. When a new wordpress version was out, it was auto disabling until an official new version of the plugin, that supports the wp version, was out. I don’t know if this is fixed now.
Spyros
Thanks for the feedback Spyros.
I find qTranslate very frustrating! It has pretty good features but when it comes to SEO it fails. You will find yourself with duplicate titles and duplicate meta tags for pretty much everything in your website. But that’s not the biggest problem! The biggest problem is its stability! When you want to post a new article it copies the contents from one language to another in your database! For example I have Romanian and English languages on my website and when I try to post an article, it either copies from Romanian to English or the other way around and it ruins me several hours of work. I found this problem happens even when editing an already published post if I switch from Visual to HTML editor. I’m starting to hate qTranslate, I think I’m gonna try WPML.
I used qtranslate until now , so far so good. But I have to say that if you are planning to use qtranslate, then double check the version of your current wp cause it tends to have couple bugs with wp tiny mce. Besides that qtranslate is all good.
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Great article, thanks! I have been having a good look at Polylang (a wordpress plug in). You have to do manual translate so it wont be suitable for everyone. If you can translate yourself it looks like one of the best to go for.
Thanks for the suggestion Jay, will have a look at Polylang too.