Manual / Human Translation – Most Complex/Expensive
For manual translations, we use a multilingual framework, on top of WordPress, called WPML. WPML creates a separate version of each page, post, string, menu item, and template. Humans provide the translations. These become part of the site’s content, fully editable and fully indexable.
Tools: WPML + professional translators or bilingual staff
Pros:
- Highest quality and accuracy
- Full control over voice, style, nuance, and terminology
- Excellent for brand-sensitive or regulated industries
- Proper multilingual SEO (unique URLs, sitemaps, hreflang)
- Stable, predictable, and future-proof
- You can include separate videos and PDFs on the pages for each language, because each page is built separately.
- Images can also be manually changed from one language to another
Cons:
- Most time-consuming
- Forms must be translated manually.
- Highest cost due to translation workload and development considerations
- Requires an ongoing workflow for updates – when staff updates english pages, foreign language content also needs to be updated.
Best for: Official communications, legal/health content, and any site where the translation has to be perfect.
Notes: Adding human translations adds complexity to the website development process, and also to website maintenance – both technical maintenance and content updates.
WPML can also do machine translations as a basis, which humans then revise and edit. Some sites that do human translation only translate a subset of pages since it can be arduous to translate an entire website.
Machine Translation (Fully Automated) – Easiest / Cheapest
The site is translated automatically by AI. The translations are not stored in WordPress and generally cannot be edited. Users essentially view an overlay of the page that is translated.
Tools: Google Translate widgets, GTranslate free version, browser auto-translation
Pros:
- Fast and inexpensive (often free)
- No setup of multiple language versions
- Useful for giving international users all of the web page text in a readable way.
Cons:
- Not editable or controllable
- Not ideal for important, legal, or marketing content
- Not SEO friendly – only the English (or source) version is archived in search engines
- May translate things in sub-optimal way (menus, product names, idioms), though machine translations have gotten fairly sophisticated
- Text that is part of an image is not translated, though text on images is discouraged
- PDFs:
- Machine translation cannot translate PDFs embedded on the site.
- Users may see the translated text around the PDF, but the PDF itself will remain in the original language(s).
- If you want translated PDFs, you would include pdfs for each language on the english page, and all languages would be available on pages in all languages.
- Videos:
- Machine translation does not translate video speech, subtitles, or on-screen text.
- If you want translated videos, you would include videos in each language on the english page, and all languages would be available on pages in all languages.
Best for: Sites where translation accuracy is not critical and where translations are desired but cost and ongoing technical debt are concerns.
Note: Adds little to no complexity to development or maintenance.
Hybrid Translation (Machine + Human Editing)
Machine translation automatically generates initial translations, which can then be reviewed and edited by humans. Depending on the tool, translations may live in WordPress or in a cloud dashboard.
Tools: GTranslate Pro version
Pros:
- Much faster than translating everything manually
- Editable – humans can fix mistakes and refine tone
- Generally supports SEO
- Good balance between accuracy, cost, and speed
Cons:
- Edits still require human time
- Some tools lock translations into their platform (vendor lock-in)
- Quality depends on follow-up review
- Not as precise as fully manual but better than machine-only
- Text that is part of an images is not translated
- May need caching management
Best for: Sites that want good translations but need a more budget-friendly or efficient approach than full manual translation.
Notes: GTranslate provides this in a way that is fairly easy to manage and implement, but caches need to be cleared frequently.
MIGHTYminnow would be happy to demonstrate the various approaches and talk through your specific / unique use case. Contact us!
