Bilingual or multilingual blogging is not supported by WordPress, but there are Plugins developed by the WordPress community which allow for the creation and maintenance of multilingual blogs.
The process is simple and straightforward. You just install your plug-in of choice and start translating. Some plug-ins offer automatic translation, which might be useful for certain content (or if you really have no budget for translation), but we don´t recommend it, particularly for corporate content.
Our recommendation is to use WPML, as it allows you to manage translations easily with your preferred supplier.
There a few basic types of multilingual Plugins, and they include:
1.Plugins used to manage translations on the generated page instead of using a post context.
Pros
- Automatic translation of all the pages provided.
Cons
- Automatic translation is not recommended as quality is low and content might be translated out of context.
- There’s a strong coupling between content and translation, and changes in the original content might break the translation.
- Not compatible with Translation Memory methodology.
2. Plugins to manage multilingual posts in one post per language. Translations are then connected together, indicating that one page is the translation of another. The best of these is easily WPML.
Pros
- Easy to install and manage.
- Webmaster keeps complete control.
- Everything gets translated automatically. If a post includes custom fields, they’re attached to that post, so they are already associated with the language.
- Compatible with Translation Memory methodology.
- Other Plugins that analyze contents (like related posts) keep working correctly.
Cons
- One-off installation
3. Plugins that store all languages alternatives for each post in the same post.
Pros
- There are no additional tables and fewer things to modify in WordPress.
Cons
- Less user friendly
- Not compatible with Translation Memory methodology.
