How can we turn our WordPress into multilingual app?

There are several ways to make our site available in more than one language. Some methods are more difficult to manage than others.

The options available for making WordPress multilingual are grouped into two categories:

To launch a standard WordPress application and create a translated version for each page or entry with the help of a plugin.

If we choose this option, we will only have to maintain one site and we will have a single administration area and a single media library. But on the other hand, it will be somewhat more complicated to translate the taxonomy of WordPress and other components such as Woocommerce. The recommended plugin in this case is WPML.

We will install the standard version of WordPress in the following cases:

• When the website is rather simple, with few pages and entries.
• When the translations of each and every entry, page and taxonomy have to be linked together
• Whenever the content is the same in all languages.
• When the performance of the website, in the case of complex websites with a lot of content, is not an important factor for us. With this option, the database accumulates many records for each translated content, so on sites with many languages lots of junk records can be generated.

To launch a WordPress with several sites. WordPress Multisite shares the same WordPress installation and allows you to create a different site for each language.

The advantage is that we are using the native functions of WordPress without using any plugin. In this case we will have an administration area and a media library for each language.

We recommend the installation of a WordPress Multisite in the following cases:

• Large and complex websites.
• This is the best option if we want each language to have a different domain (.es, .de or .it)
• When we want each site to have different content. For example, if our business has subsidiaries in several countries and we want each team in each country to have the freedom to create their own content, and not have the same content translated into each language.
• With Multisite, it is easier to remove a language when we no longer need it.

No option is better than other and the most important thing is to plan in advance where our web site will head to and what our goals are. In any case, we recommend avoiding automatic translations such as Google Translate or plugins that automatically translate the site with external automatic translation services. If we use the automated translation it is imperative that a human translator reviews and edits those pieces of content.