Get your Website Translated into French!
When I decided to switch to WordPress for the new version of my professional website, I searched far and wide for the best way to make it bilingual. After careful consideration, I chose the Polylang plugin and I don’t know about you, but I’m very happy with the result.
How It Works for WordPress
First, I install the Polylang plugin on your website using the WordPress dashboard. Then, for each page, I extract the text in the Visual panel, which is then processed in the following ways:
- A separate Microsoft Word file is created for each WordPress page. The word count indicated by Word is used to calculate the number of words to translate. If there is any additional image text, this is added too, and we agree on the word count before the translation begins. For instance, here’s what the text of my About Me page looks like at this stage. Notice the word count circled in green at the bottom of the window:
- Each page is then translated using SDL Trados Studio, a powerful translation tool which creates a translation memory (TM) for your website. As each sentence is translated, it goes into the TM so that if you update a page, existing translations can be leveraged and in the future, you’ll only pay for the new contents to be translated.
This is what the same page looks like in SDL:
- After the translation is finished, proofread and corrected, it gets converted back into a Word file. This is used to generate the French companion to your English page using the Language module that is added to the WordPress interface when Polylang is installed.
The Bottom Line
All that technical stuff? Don’t worry about it. That’s my job. What you get is a worry-free, turnkey French translation for your WordPress website.
Of course, since it results from my work, the TM belongs to me. But it also belongs to you since it’s your contents to begin with. So you get a copy of the TM for free on request, no questions asked. This also applies to the Word files.
Interested? Questions?
Please fill in this form and I’ll be sure to reply as soon as I can.