Consider using a translator plugin

If you scroll down to the footer of Daily Blog Tips you will notice a couple of flags, where the user can click to translate the content of the pages into different languages. This translator plugin was installed a couple of months ago, and it had a tangible impact on my traffic and page views, increasing it by 20%.

I am fluent in English, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian, but translating my posts into those languages would consume far too much time. Bear in mind that the translation is automatic and performed by computers, meaning that you should not expect a smooth and well structured version of your posts on other languages.

Despite the reduced quality, however, I believe that the plugin is worth because it will enable readers that are not fluent in English to get a general idea from your posts. Secondly, since the translated pages are cached, you will also receive search engine traffic from people searching in other languages. Even if those visitors might find a poorly translated page they can check the English version and become regular readers of your blog.

Currently I am using Angsuman’s Translator Plugin Pro. It costs $30 but it seems to be the most reliable and search engine friendly translator (it creates a clear URL structure for the translated pages). Alternatively you can try the Global Translator Plugin, which is free but creates long and complex URLs for the translated pages.

Daniel Scocco on February 21, 2007 Subscribe to our RSS Feed

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28 Responses to “Consider using a translator plugin”

Roberto Alamos Moreno on February 21st, 2007 6:45 am

I’m considering using a translator plugin because as you said, although automatic translation isn’t good enough, ppl searching in other languages will find my blog and read the well written english (or spanish) version if they can.

Currently I manually translate coderbattery.com’s posts from spanish to english, and I’m using a custom plugin that I coded in order to help a post in the english version of my blog, find its spanish version in coderbattery.cl’s and in the other direction as well. It has worked nice for me
Ajay on February 21st, 2007 7:02 am

I am using Translator pro as well, however it has a horrible toll on my VPS, even with wp-cache.

Global Translator didn’t work for me. It has been improved for cleaner urls.

I’ve heard of GGTranslate as well. You may want to check it out.
Edward Wolf on February 21st, 2007 7:23 am

Great tip. Thanks.
Daniel on February 21st, 2007 7:30 am

I have not testet GGTranslate, but I will give it a shot on some test blogs I have, thanks for sharing.
Mac Utopia on February 21st, 2007 7:58 am

I just recently implemented Global Translator. It works fine for me and the URLS are clean and simple similar to Angsuman’s.
Dawud Miracle on February 21st, 2007 9:06 am

I, too, have been thinking about this. I’ve been looking at Angsuman’s Pro plugin so it’s nice to know seems reliable.
Brian on February 21st, 2007 12:03 pm

We use Angsumanâ€™s translator too and saw similar results to yours.

This is the only Wordpress plugin we paid for and feel its been very good value.

The other advantage of the translator is that both Google and Yahoo see more pages on your website, which seems to be a good thing.

Thanks for the post

Regards
Brian
Lovedeep Wadhwa on February 21st, 2007 9:10 pm

The latest version of global translator plugin has been completely rewritten.

It now outputs search engine friendly urls for all the supported languages and got inbuilt caching support.

You can download it from here.
qianbloger on February 22nd, 2007 12:55 pm

this is so great!!
thank u very much!
Lorelle on February 22nd, 2007 6:17 pm

There are several other options besides those, and some people have been having trouble with Global Translator lately. There are fixes available though.

I’d also like to point out there there are two types of translation Plugins. One creates a machine translation of your blog and the other type helps you blog in different languages, recognizing different language characteristics and such. I have some listed in Translation and Multilingual WordPress Plugins for more information.
Mark on March 27th, 2007 2:50 am

Hi Daniel
I use the Global Translator plugin on my site which I’m very happy with. However MSN currently does not index any translated pages even though Google and Yahoo has indexed many. Checking out your site, which I know uses the alternate Angsuman’s plugin, I can you have many tranlated pages indexed in MSN.
Did you do anything extra to get the translated pages into MSN’s index or is it maybe just a case of waiting for MSN to catch up?
Kevin on January 12th, 2008 1:57 am

I used global translator, but it leads to 403 forbidden error from google.
I guess it has raised too much translation request to google.
Is there a new fix for it?

–
Kevin
Plenty of Software: Free downloads center
http://www.plentyofsoft.com
Fine Jewelry Guide on February 15th, 2008 3:44 am

Although Automatic translation is not accurate, I’ll use a translator plugin as you suggested so others from different cultures can find my blog.
David on May 19th, 2008 5:54 am

hey thanks for the plugin. was looking for something like this!
SEO Genius on June 17th, 2008 1:52 pm

Great article i have been considering translating my site in to Chinese as Chinese is growing and growing larger.

Do you think this would be a good idea?
Placement Papers on September 13th, 2008 10:49 am

I have long thinking to install a WP translation plugin. But i didnt know the good one. So i might check the paid and the free ones mentioned by you. I will initially go for the free one - the global translation plugin.. and may later switch to the paid one.
Thanks a lot for the nice post.
small hosting on October 14th, 2008 12:42 pm

I didn’t see any flag below. But nice idea. Will try that.
Jazili on October 29th, 2008 1:19 am

Nice idea I’m sure it will broaden up my reader…, thanks for the inspiration…
Michelle on November 1st, 2008 4:14 am

So I noticed that this blog doesn’t use this plugin anymore. If it brought extra traffic, why isn’t it being used?
Davide on November 21st, 2008 6:53 am

Hi all!
I suggest you Global Translator: the latest version is very stable and strongly optimzed!
Bang Kritikus on January 28th, 2009 3:43 am

Use google webmaster tools translator
paulkersey on January 28th, 2009 1:45 pm

thanks, this is a very good option for webmasters!
benshare on March 24th, 2009 1:31 pm

global-translator-pro vs Translator Plugin Pro. which one the better?
EnergyChina on April 15th, 2009 7:20 am

yes.

Maybe i should try and install it.