We would like to translate our WordPress installation into multiple languages. I found the following three plugins:
I heard the ICanLocalize is a bit of a mess. Don’t know the others. It’s not sooo important to have an integration with a translation agency, but really just to have the website up in multiple languages with a reasonable link structure.
How about using the qtranslate plugin?
You can look at transposh. It supports link translation and language in url part, as well as manual editing and approval of translation
The best WordPress localization plugin is to use the default WordPress functions.
It’s actually pretty straightfoward. Any text you want localized you put into one of two functions. The first one below echos out the text directly and the second one returns the text into an object. I always prefer the latter as you can always stick an ‘echo’ in front of the function if you want to echo it out.
_e($message, 'your_namespace')__($message, 'your_namespace')What happens is that if the $message has a traslation, that translation is returned. If not, then it’s echoed out as is. This is nice because it allows you to put in all your localization placeholders before you get your translations together.
Next up, you create the translation files. You can create your own namespace by using one of many free tools to create a “portable object” (.po) file that you turn into a “machine object” (.mo) that is optimized for looking these things up. I use a free tool called Poedit to edit these files. The software is cross platform.
One you’ve got the placeholders in place and have uploaded your translation file (.mo) you simply drop a single line of code into your template’s functions.php, or your plugin file. What you’re saying here is “use these translations when you try to localize something in the ‘your_namespace’ namespace.”
load_textdomain('your_namespace', (WP_CONTENT_DIR . '/path/to/file.mo'));It’s either qTranslate or WPML. See the reviews
Have a look at WPML
Read this, it will clarify the differences with the various plugins out there
The two main contenders as best multilanguage plugins for WordPress are WPML and QTranslate. If you want a quick answer to which one comes out on top, I would say go for WPML. If you have enough time to give them a test drive, sdbloggers by all means do so and judge for yourself which one works best for your needs.