Multisite for Different Languages vs. Translation Plugin: What Works Better?

If your business has a worldwide audience, you could be thinking how to communicate with everyone and build a good relationship. Localized product in the users’ native tongue could be the solution.

With the global economy making a shift towards an international market, it’s now possible for a local company to create a product for the whole world.

Business has changed a lot in the last decades. It’s not as easy as in the past, especially if you want to compete on a global scale. At this new world, the best way to adapt your business to this cultural change is by creating a localized content for each country you target. If you want to become successful with a global business you need to become a global company.

The Demand for Internationalization

The globalization of the world is increasing the demand for internationalization. Localization, and more specifically language localization, is key to internationalization. You want to have a global brand in order to compete with large companies.

Localization allows you to provide a more personal experience for your users by making your site accessible to people in their preferred language. Localization can have a massive impact on your conversion rate by catering to the needs of your users.

Localizing your WordPress site is an important step if you want to reach a global audience. By localizing your WordPress site, you can provide a better user experience in a language that your users understand the best, while also catering to the needs of those who aren’t as comfortable with the language.

Localizing your WordPress site also allows you to increase sales, your ROI and KPI’s by converting highly targeted traffic. But where do you start? And how do you find the right technology for the localization task?

How to Create Multilingual WordPress Website?

There are 2 main approaches to creating a multilingual WordPress website:

1. Using a WordPress Multisite feature to construct a multilingual network of sites
2. Making use of translation plugin that does the job automatically.

In this post, we’ll go over the benefits and drawbacks of these techniques and find out how to make the best of WordPress capabilities for multilingual content. Then we’ll walk you through how to use it to generate various language versions of your site. Let’s get going!

WordPress Multisite for Multilingual Sites

WordPress Multisite is a single system that allows users to manage numerous WordPress websites from one panel. The centralization of configuration and shared assets like plugins and themes simplifies service management.

The most important thing to note when creating a multilingual webpage is that multisite isn’t just various versions of the same site. It’s essentially a collection of separate internet sites that are all controlled from their own control panels. There are numerous advantages and disadvantages to this system.

How to Set Up WordPress Multisite for Multilingual Sites?

Setting up a WordPress multisite network for multilingual sites can be an effective way to manage multiple language versions of your website. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you set it up:

1. Enable Multisite in WordPress. First, ensure that WordPress Multisite is enabled. To do this, open the wp-config.php file in your site’s root directory and add the following line just before the line that says “That’s all, stop editing!”: define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true); After saving the file, go to your WordPress dashboard, and under Tools, you’ll see the option for Network Setup. This will guide you through the process of creating a multisite network.
2. Install the Multisite Network. Once enabled, you’ll be asked to set up the network. You can choose between subdomains (e.g., en.yoursite.com) or subdirectories (e.g., yoursite.com/en). Choose what works best for your site structure and SEO strategy. WordPress will then prompt you to update the .htaccess file and the wp-config.php file to finalize the network setup.
3. Configure Language Sites. After your network is set up, you can create new sites for each language. Go to the My Sites menu in the WordPress dashboard, select Network Admin, then click on Sites and Add New. For each new site, you’ll assign a language (e.g., French, German) and set the corresponding URL structure (either subdomain or subdirectory).
4. Install Multilingual Plugins. To make your multisite truly multilingual, you’ll need a plugin designed for translation management. While some multilingual plugins are multisite-compatible, you will still need a lot of manual work in order to keep translations fresh, update external and internal links, change media files, etc.
5. Maintain SEO. Each language version of your site should have its own set of SEO settings. You will need to manually configure meta tags, titles, and descriptions for each language to ensure proper indexing by search engines.

The multisite approach to multilingual websites offers centralized control, but it requires considerable manual effort. While powerful, this method can become time-consuming, especially as the number of languages increases.

The Pros of Multisite for Multilingual Content

The major benefit of using WordPress Multisite to establish a chain of international sites is that, because the sites are distinct, you may have completely different articles for each instead of simply translating the same documents into other languages. This allows you to create completely customized websites that cover a broad range of regional requirements all over the world.

Another huge benefit of multisite is that you may organize the websites however you like. Subdomains, folders, and even wholly new top-level domain names can be used.

The Cons of Multisite for Multilingual Content

The fact that each website is independent is one of the most obvious benefits of multisite for multilingual content. Nevertheless, there are certain downsides to this idea:

1. The first is that it is not simple to use. Multisite is easier to administer than separate WordPress sites, as we’ve already explained. It is, nevertheless, more difficult than administering a single website.
2. Not all plugins are compatible with multisite. You will have to choose specifically those that will not break your structure and ruin your content.
3. While all of the sites in the group will use the same add-ons and design, they will need to be installed and customized separately for each one. Even if creating a new website takes only 30 minutes, creating a network of sites for each language may take a few days! Moreover, making changes in this network may also take a while.
4. Likewise, every modification to the original site’s articles must be manually copied on all secondary sites. Although there are plugins that can simplify pieces of this task, at least some human labor will always be involved. This is especially true if you want duplicate content issues and keep your information up-to-date.
5. Finally, translating a network of separate sites can be a hassle. There might be several methods to make this process more efficient, but none of them are perfect.

Because of these drawbacks, multisite isn’t always the greatest option for creating a multilingual website.

Luckily, this task can be streamlined with the use of different translation plugins. There are different options out there that may provide fully automated, semi-automatic, as well as manual translation modes.

Translation Plugin for Multilingual Sites

Many people struggle to get their website localized because they lack experience with internationalization. Translation plugin for WordPress enables localization of your WordPress sites, giving you several options for accomplishing it.

WordPress translation plugin is a tool that uses either a human translator or AI-based machine translation to automatically translate your posts or pages into different languages of your choice.

So, you are able to save your time and money!

Translation plugins for WordPress improve the user experience through more personal communication; they also promote intercultural dialogue through cross-cultural communications.

Translation plugins are much easier to use than creating a WordPress Multisite network.

In this review, we will take a look at Autoglot WordPress translation plugin and see advantages and disadvantages of this plugin for multilingual website.

How to Set Up Translation Plugin for Multilingual Sites

Using a translation plugin like Autoglot can simplify the process of making your WordPress site multilingual. Here’s a step-by-step guide to translating your WordPress site using the Autoglot plugin:

1. Install and Activate the Autoglot Plugin. To begin, go to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Plugins – Add New. Search for “Autoglot” and click Install Now next to the plugin. After installation, click Activate to enable the plugin on your site.
2. Register in the Autoglot Control Panel. After activating the plugin, you’ll need to register your site in the Autoglot Control Panel. Provide your details to create an account and gain access to your personal control panel.
3. Get Your Free API Key. Once registered, log in to the Autoglot Control Panel. Here, you’ll find your free API key. Copy this key, as it will be used to connect your site to the Autoglot translation service. Go back to your WordPress dashboard, and under the Autoglot settings, paste the API key into the required field. Click Save Settings to connect your site to Autoglot.
4. Set Up Language Switcher. Autoglot allows you to add a language switcher to your site, enabling visitors to choose their preferred language. In the plugin settings, enable the Language Switcher option.
5. Choose the Languages for Translation. In the Languages section of the plugin settings, select the languages you want your site to be available in. Autoglot supports many languages, so you can choose multiple languages to automatically translate your content. You can add or remove languages at any time.
6. Check the Results of Automatic Translation. Once you’ve set up everything, the plugin will automatically translate your site’s content into the selected languages. To check the results, visit your site and use the language switcher to toggle between different language versions. Autoglot uses advanced machine translation, but manual edits may still be needed for specific content.

Setting up the Autoglot plugin for multilingual sites is a simple process. By following these steps, you can install the plugin, configure language options, and start translating your site automatically.

The Pros of Translation Plugin for Multilingual Content

The list of advantages of translation plugin is actually huge. We will try to cover the most important items:

1. It’s much easier to have a single installation of WordPress and administer all your tasks in one place instead of switching between numerous sites in a multisite network. You will only have one set of plugins, one copy of each article, one theme and one control panel.
2. Translation plugin will automate all your configuration tasks. You will not need to make changes in your code, set up different paths and URLs for each language, tune themes and plugins. Autoglot translation plugin will do this for you within a few seconds and a couple of clicks.
3. You will not need to update hundreds of copies of your articles in different languages if you need to modify any content. This happens on-the-fly right after you update your original article in your main language.
4. If your translation plugin benefits from the power of neural machine translation solutions, all your translation happens automatically. This saves your time!
5. Moreover, the cost of automatic translation can be 10, 100, or even 1,000 times lower than hiring a programmer to create a multisite network, paying a human translator for manual translation, and then uploading translated content to separate multisite blogs. Autoglot saves your money!
6. Autoglot translation plugin is fully SEO compatible, it automatically adds hreflang tags, and supports many SEO plugins. With a multisite network, you will need to remember to update SEO settings on every page in order to make them visible for search engines. You will also need to interlink all language versions between each other. Autoglot does this automatically.
7. Finally, the quality of AI-based automatic translation systems has improved considerably in recent years. As evidenced by many experts, there is almost no gap in translation quality between human-translated texts and the translations done by machine. You should also take into account that many freelance translators simply use machine tools to translate texts and slightly proofread them. Why pay for this?

The Cons of Translation Plugin for Multilingual Content

Unfortunately, there is no ideal solution that will cover all possible tasks and requirements. With all these awesome advantages come a few drawbacks. Luckily, there are not many of them.

First of all, if you want your content to be regional-specific, if you want to write about different topics in different languages, you’d better choose a multisite network with distinct sites for each region. Remember to update all of them!

Then, some plugins may be incompatible with automatic translation. Although there are plenty of plugins in WordPress repository, some of them may fail to support internationalization.

Finally, if your goal is to spend your company’s budget, translation plugin may turn out to be too simple, easy and cheap solution! In this case, you may want to hire a team of engineers, translators, managers, and spend a fortune on what can be done with Autoglot in a few clicks!

Summary: What is Better?

Offering your website in all users’ local languages can vastly enhance their interactions, resulting in increased involvement and revenues. Customers from all around the world can access language versions of your multilingual website.

Setting up a multilingual multisite network can be time-consuming and costly. Adding a translation plugin like Autoglot is quick, cheap and easy!

But each option comes with its unique pros and cons. Final choice is always yours!

Next steps

1. Get Autoglot plugin from official WordPress repository and install it on your website
2. Register in Autoglot Control Panel and receive your API key for free
3. Choose languages and start acquiring new visitors!