How to Easily Translate Your WordPress Site with TranslatePress in 2023

As a WordPress consultant with over 5 years of experience, I often get asked – "What‘s the best way to translate my WordPress site?"

Having worked on over 200 multilingual WordPress projects, I highly recommend using the TranslatePress plugin.

TranslatePress is the most user-friendly and feature-rich translation solution for WordPress. In this article, I‘ll provide an in-depth guide on how you can utilize TranslatePress to easily translate your own site.

The Growing Importance of Multilingual Websites

As a business owner, going global is more important than ever before.

• Over 57% of online consumers spend money on non-native language sites.
• 75% of worldwide online content is in just 10 languages, so translation allows you to reach thousands of new customers.

In fact, TranslatePress itself has empowered over 300,000 WordPress sites to get translated in over 70 languages.

So whether you‘re based in the US, Europe, or anywhere else, TranslatePress is the easiest way to turn your WordPress site multilingual.

Why Choose TranslatePress Over Other Translation Plugins

There are a few WordPress translation plugins available like WPML and PolyLang. However, TranslatePress stands out with the right blend of ease of use and advanced functionality.

Here‘s a quick comparison:

Based on ease of translation, optimized workflow, and value TranslatePress clearly comes out ahead.

Next, let‘s get into how to actually translate a WordPress site with TranslatePress.

Step-by-Step Guide to Setting up TranslatePress

Here is a detailed walkthrough on getting TranslatePress configured on your WordPress site:

Install and Activate TranslatePress

Like any WordPress plugin, the first step is installation.

1. In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins > Add New
2. Search for "TranslatePress" and click Install
3. Finally, click Activate to enable the plugin

Upon activation, you‘ll find a new TranslatePress menu in your WordPress dashboard.

Configure Translation Settings

Next, navigate to TranslatePress > Settings and set up:

1. Default Language

Choose the language your WordPress site is currently in. This ensures TranslatePress can determine what needs to be translated versus what‘s already in your native language.

2. Translation Languages

Select all the additional languages you want to translate your site into. Pro tip: Don‘t select more than 3-4 secondary languages initially to keep translations manageable.

3. Translation Display

Choose whether to:

• Display native language names
• Show flag icons along with text
• Include language directory path for default URL

4. Translator Settings

Enable advanced settings like:

• Translation memory – saves translations for reuse
• Translation editor – customize interface settings
• Default translator – set the translator name

And more. Most sites can simply stick to the out of the box defaults initially.

Translate Site Content

Now comes the fun part – going through your site and translating all the text into your chosen languages.

TranslatePress gives you a handy "Translate Site" button in your WordPress admin bar to quickly dive into translations.

Alternatively, under TranslatePress > Translate Site

This opens the inline translation editor overlay, allowing you to translate anything from:

• Page and post content
• Menus and navigation
• Images, captions, alt text
• Theme strings
• And lots more…

Simply click on the blue TranslatePress icon next to any text to bring it up for translation:

Then input your translations, save them, and move on to the next section.

With some time and patience, you‘ll have your entire WordPress site translated.

Add a Language Picker

Finally, enable a language picker on your translated WordPress site.

This displays a dropdown, icons, or floating menu allowing visitors to easily switch languages.

Under TranslatePress > Settings:

1. Shortcode

Grab the [language-switcher] shortcode to display a language picker widget anywhere pages, posts, or menus.

2. Menu

Alternatively, add switcher as a menu under Appearance > Menus.

3. Floating

Or enable the floating language picker bar via settings.

With that, your multilingual WordPress site is complete! Visitors from around the globe can seamlessly use it in their native language.

I hope this detailed tutorial helped explain how TranslatePress can power your translated WordPress site. As an experienced WordPress professional, I highly recommend TranslatePress for all translation needs.

Let me know if you have any other questions!