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Cerchi un modo per offrire WordPress in più lingue?
Creare un sito WordPress multilingue è un ottimo modo per costruire un sito web più intuitivo e raggiungere più visitatori. Ma se vuoi usare più lingue, avrai bisogno di un aiuto perché WordPress non supporta più lingue. per impostazione predefinita.
In questo post, analizzeremo i diversi strumenti che puoi utilizzare per offrire il tuo sito in diverse lingue. Dopodiché, ti mostreremo passo dopo passo come aggiungere lingue al tuo sito utilizzando TranslatePress, la soluzione che riteniamo migliore per la maggior parte degli utenti di WordPress.
Entro la fine di questo articolo, sarai in grado di offrire facilmente il tuo sito in più lingue e gestire le tue traduzioni utilizzando un semplice editor visivo come questo:
Ma prima di arrivare a tutte queste informazioni, esaminiamo rapidamente i maggiori vantaggi dell'utilizzo di più lingue su WordPress.
Vantaggi dell'offerta di WordPress in diverse lingue
Ci sono due grandi vantaggi nell'offrire WordPress in più lingue:
- Puoi raggiungere nuovi visitatori e ampliare il tuo pubblico.
- Puoi creare un'esperienza utente migliore per i visitatori nuovi o esistenti che parlano una lingua diversa.
Al primo punto, se implementato correttamente, rendere disponibile il tuo sito WordPress in più lingue ti permette di trarre vantaggio da ottimizzazione per i motori di ricerca (SEO) multilingue.
Con un sito WordPress monolingua, puoi posizionare i tuoi contenuti su Google per una sola lingua. Ma quando aggiungi più lingue, avrai la possibilità di posizionare i tuoi contenuti in ogni singola lingua che offri. Questo può raddoppiare o triplicare rapidamente le tue opportunità di posizionamento, il tutto senza creare alcun contenuto “nuovo”.
La traduzione del tuo sito può anche aumentare la tua visibilità in altri modi, poiché ti consentirà di raggiungere un pubblico nuovo anche sui social media.
Secondo, offrire il tuo sito in diverse lingue ti aiuta a creare una migliore esperienza utente per i tuoi visitatori multilingue.
Come ci si potrebbe aspettare, il la stragrande maggioranza delle persone preferisco navigare sui siti web nella loro lingua madre ogni volta che è possibile. Diventando multilingue, puoi offrire a questi visitatori ciò che desiderano.
Questo vale anche se il tuo sito web si rivolge solo a una piccola area geografica. Ad esempio, se il tuo sito web si rivolge a visitatori della California, una parte significativa dei tuoi visitatori parla spagnolo come lingua preferita. Offrendo il tuo sito sia in inglese che in spagnolo, puoi garantire a tutti un'esperienza ottimale.
Passiamo ora alla domanda successiva: come puoi ottimizzare il tuo sito web per ottenere questi miglioramenti?
Diversi metodi per utilizzare WordPress in più lingue
Se desideri rendere disponibile il tuo sito WordPress in più lingue, puoi seguire diverse strade:
- Plugin di traduzione per WordPress
- Servizio di traduzione SaaS (Software as a Service)
- Widget di traduzione dinamica
- WordPress Multisito
Esaminiamo i pro e i contro di ciascun approccio…
Plugin di traduzione per WordPress
A Plugin di traduzione per WordPress semplifica la traduzione del tuo sito WordPress in una o più nuove lingue.
A seconda del plugin, potrai utilizzare la traduzione manuale, quella automatica o una combinazione delle due.
Le tue traduzioni saranno completamente indicizzabili da Google e condivisibili sui social media. La maggior parte dei plugin di traduzione fa anche un passo in più, aggiungendo altre funzionalità utili come un selettore di lingua front-end e miglioramenti SEO multilingue.
Pro:
- Conveniente – la maggior parte dei plugin di traduzione ha un costo piuttosto contenuto e alcuni offrono addirittura versioni gratuite.
- Proprietà – tutti i tuoi contenuti tradotti rimangono sul server del tuo sito.
- WordPress nativo – trattandosi di plugin nativi di WordPress, potrai gestire tutto direttamente dalla dashboard di WordPress e non dovrai imparare a usare una nuova interfaccia.
Contro:
- Può richiedere molto tempo (se utilizzi la traduzione manuale) – se vuoi risparmiare tempo, ti consigliamo di scegliere un plugin che supporti la traduzione automatica tramite servizi come Google Translate o DeepL.
Servizio di traduzione SaaS
Con uno strumento di traduzione SaaS, avrai a disposizione una dashboard cloud dedicata dove potrai gestire tutte le traduzioni del tuo sito. Le tue traduzioni risiedono sui server dello strumento SaaS, ma in genere ti verrà fornito un plugin di integrazione per pubblicarle sul tuo sito WordPress.
In genere, la procedura di configurazione si svolge più o meno così:
- Crea un account sul sito web del servizio
- Installa il plugin di integrazione su WordPress e sincronizzalo con il servizio
- Gestisci le tue traduzioni dal sito web del servizio
Pro:
- Semplice – the biggest benefit of these services is simplicity. They usually automatically translate your content right away, which lets you start offering WordPress in multiple languages within just a few minutes.
Contro:
- Expensive – with a SaaS tool, you’ll need to pay a recurring fee for as long as you want to use the service. This is different from the normal WordPress plugin approach of a one-time fee (plus an optional renewal to continue receiving updates and support).
- Lack of ownership – because your translations don’t “live” on your WordPress site’s servers, there can be some ownership issues. Most services will let you export your translations if you stop using the service, but it’s still not ideal.
Dynamic Translation Widget
A dynamic translation widget works a lot like how the Chrome browser’s automatic translation feature works. Visitors choose their preferred language from a drop-down. Then, the service (usually Google Translate) dynamically translates all of the content on the page.
If you want to experience this in action, just open a page in Chrome that’s not in your native language – these widgets add that exact same effect, but to your WordPress site.
Two important things to note about this approach are that:
- The translations are never saved anywhere. They happen dynamically in each visitor’s browser. This means you can’t edit them.
- The translations aren’t separate pages, which means that people can’t link to the translated version and Google can’t index the translated version.
Pro:
- Semplice – these tools are super easy to use. You pretty much just install a plugin and you’re ready to go.
- Comprehensive – you can offer any language that Google Translate supports, which lets you translate your site into 100+ different languages with a single widget.
- Free – typically, these simple plugins are 100% free.
Contro:
- Not SEO-friendly – because the widget is dynamically translating your content, there’s no static version of your translated content for search engines like Google to index. Basically, you cannot rank your translated content in Google, which means you’re completely missing out on the benefits of multilingual SEO.
- Cannot edit translations – there’s no option to manually edit the dynamic translations – you’re completely at the whims of the machine translations. This is a big deal if you want to guarantee accurate translations.
WordPress Multisito
Another approach to add languages to WordPress is to use WordPress multisite to create a network of sites. You can create a new network site for every language that you want to offer and then add links to each language. This will let you have a multi language WordPress site without using a plugin.
This approach is free, but it has some big drawbacks when it comes to managing your content.
Pro:
- SEO-friendly – each language gets its own indexable translations, which helps you benefit from multilingual SEO.
- Easy to customize sites for localization – because each language is its own network site, it’s easy to create different layouts/menus/sidebars/etc. which can improve localization in some scenarios.
Consigli:
- No automatic translation support – you’ll need to translate all of your content manually from scratch, which is time-consuming compared to other tools that let you use automatic translation to get a base.
- Hard to sync content – because each language is its own network site, there’s nothing syncing the content, which makes it hard to keep track of things. For example, if you edit the English-language version, you’ll have to remember to also update the Spanish content. A translation plugin or SaaS tool usually has features to make this easier.
Which Method Should You Use?
For most people, using a dedicated WordPress translation plugin is the best route for a few reasons:
- You can optimize for multilingual SEO – that is, you can actually rank your translated content in Google, which wouldn’t be possible with a dynamic translation widget.
- You can choose your translation method – a good translation plugin should let you choose between automatic and manual translation (and even combine the two for the best of both worlds).
- It’s affordable – you’ll pay a one-time fee rather than the expensive recurring billing that the SaaS translation tools require.
- You have full ownership – your translations stay on your WordPress site’s server, rather than being served from a separate server like some SaaS tools.
When it comes to WordPress translation plugins, the best option is TranslatePress. TranslatePress offers the ease of use of a SaaS tool in a native WordPress plugin package.
You’ll be able to manage all of your translations using a simple visual editor like this:
Out of the box, TranslatePress works with tutto of your WordPress site’s content, including content from your plugins or theme.
It also includes multilingual SEO features to help you rank your content and lots of user-friendly features, like a floating front-end language switcher.
Guida a WordPress Multilingua
In this section, we’ll show you how to offer your WordPress site in different languages using the TranslatePress plugin. But before we get started, here’s a short video explaining how to do it in less than 5 minutes:
TranslatePress is available for free at WordPress.org and you’ll be able to follow most of this tutorial with just the free version.
With the free version, you’ll be able to offer your WordPress site in one new language using the same simple visual editor that you saw above. You’ll also get:
- Fully indexable translations, which can help you get started with multilingual SEO.
- A front-end selettore di lingua that you can add to different parts of your site.
- The option to use automatic translation powered by Google Translate (while still being able to manually edit those translations).
For more features, you can upgrade to the Pro version to:
- Translate your site into unlimited new languages (vs one new language in the free version).
- Further improve your multilingual SEO with the ability to translate SEO metadata, URL slugs, and more.
- Use DeepL for automatic translations (in addition to Google Translate).
- Access lots of other useful features
TranslatePress Multilingue
Per iniziare installare e attivare il plugin gratuito TranslatePress disponibile su WordPress.org. Then, here’s how to set everything up…
1. Choose Which Languages to Add to WordPress
Una volta installato e attivato il plugin, puoi andare su Impostazioni → TranslatePress to choose your site’s default language and the new language(s) into which you want to translate your content:
2. Choose Your Approach to Language Translation
Next, you need to choose how you want to translate your content. You have three options:
- 100% manual – you can manually add all of your translations from scratch, either by yourself or with the help of a freelancer or translation agency. This is the most time-consuming approach, but it guarantees accurate translations.
- 100% automatic machine translation – you can use Google Translate or DeepL to automatically translate your entire site. This is the fastest method but, while machine translation has improved a lot, automatic translations still aren’t perfect.
- Mixed – you can start by using Google Translate or DeepL to generate a set of baseline translations. Then, you can go back and manually refine those translations as needed.
For most people, the mixed approach offers the best balance. It lets you quickly get up and running with a fully translated site. However, you can still manually edit the translations needed where necessary – you can either make these edits yourself or you can hire a freelancer to go through and proofread your machine translations.
If you want to use one of the automatic translation approaches, you can configure your preferred service in the Traduzione automatica tab. Here are two guides for the services that TranslatePress supports:
3. Trascina i Tuoi Contenuti
Now, you’re ready to translate your content! Or, if you used automatic translation, you’re ready to manually refine your translations (if needed).
You can use TranslatePress’ visual editor to translate 100% of your content, no matter if it’s coming from the WordPress editor, your plugin, or your tema.
To open the translation editor, go to the piece of content that you want to translate on the front-end of your site and click the Traduci pagina pulsante sulla barra degli strumenti di WordPress:
This will launch a live preview of your content, along with a sidebar on the left where you can manage your translations.
To translate any content on your site, hover over it on the live preview and click the pencil icon. That will open the translation in the sidebar editor – all you need to do is enter the translated text in the box:
You’ll use this same approach to translate your entire site. If you want to see more detailed instructions for specific parts of your site, here are a bunch of guides that can help. How to translate…
- Blocchi dell'editor (Gutenberg)
- Campi personalizzati
- Tipi di pubblicazione personalizzati
- Moduli WordPress
- Menu di WordPress
- Immagini
- Contenuto del popup
- Cursori
- Prodotti WooCommerce
4. Optimize for Multilingual SEO
In the previous section, we focused on helping you translate the front-end content of your site. This is what your human visitors will mostly care about. However, if you want to optimize your site’s multilingual SEO, you also need to translate the behind-the-scenes details like your:
- SEO titles and meta description
- URL slug
- Social media information (Open Graph tags)
- Mappa del sito
Con il premium SEO Pack addon, you’ll be able to also translate all of these elements using TranslatePress.
Once you’ve purchased and installed the SEO Pack add-on, you’ll be able to manage the translations for your SEO metadata and social media information using the drop-down in the TranslatePress editor:
To edit URL slugs, you can click the option to open the String Translation interface.
5. Configure Your WordPress Language Switcher
To help your visitors choose their preferred languages, TranslatePress automatically adds a floating language switcher to the bottom-right corner of your site. You can fully customize this switcher by going to Settings → TranslatePress → Language Switcher scheda.
Here, you have the ability to move this language switcher to a different location and change how it works and looks. For example, you could move it to your site’s top left corner and only show the language name (instead of also showing a flag).
In addition to the floating language switcher, you can also place your language switcher:
- In a menu using a new option in the native WordPress menu tool (Aspetto → Menu).
- Anywhere on your site using a block or shortcode (including in your sidebar by adding it to a widget).
- Directly in your theme’s template files using a PHP function
And that’s it! Visitors will now be able to benefit from multiple languages when they browse your site, and you’ll also be able to start ranking your content in Google in multiple languages.
Inizia a usare WordPress in più lingue oggi
Offering your WordPress site in multiple languages is a great way to help you reach more people in search engines and on social media. Better yet, it also provides a better experience for any existing multilingual visitors to your site because they’ll be able to choose their preferred languages while browsing.
While you have lots of options for offering WordPress in different languages, a dedicated WordPress translation plugin is the best option for most sites because:
- You can use both automatic and manual translation (and mix-and-match the two approaches as needed).
- Your translations will be static indexable content, which lets you benefit from multilingual SEO and also lets visitors share your multilingual content or link to it from their sites.
- It’s affordable because you can avoid the expensive monthly fees that come with SaaS translation tools.
- Your translations stay on your WordPress site’s server.
To easily get started with a multilingual WordPress site, you can use the free TranslatePress plugin at WordPress.org and follow this guide.
Then, if you want to improve your site’s multilingual SEO, offer unlimited new languages, and get access to some other useful premium features, aggiorna alla versione premium.
