Wordpress

LanguageWire’s APIs and connectors are a time- and effort-saving solution, helping you avoid copying text unnecessarily from one place to another and import any changes, no matter how big or small, to all language versions of your website in almost real time.

A connector is a kind of system integration that allows the customer to order a translation of the content through an existing publishing system. In practice, a customer who uses a publishing system to process their website content can use our connector to order website translations from within their content management system. Once the translations are ready, they are imported into the system as localised copies of the original page.

We have listed five key reasons why integration is a good idea.

1. Work in a familiar publishing system

LanguageWire connectors and custom API work with your CMS, PIM or DAM. You can order translations and track the progress of projects directly through the digital platform you are already using.

Integration can be built with nearly any generally used content management system. We have Adobe, Drupal, inRiver, Optimizely, Sitecore, TYPO3, Shopify, Umbraco and WordPress connectors – and many others! If you didn’t find an option suitable for your platform among our connectors, you can use our API to create a custom integration between your digital platform and LanguageWire.

2. Automate your translation management process

Copying source texts from websites and emailing them to be translated is a time-consuming process. A smarter and more efficient way to manage large volumes of website content and numerous language versions is to integrate the systems so that the process for managing the translations is as highly automated as possible. Managing online store product information in different language versions, for instance, is much easier when the processed are automated.

LanguageWire’s APIs and connectors make full automation of the process possible. Simply connect your application to a tech-enabled translation management tool, and your translations can be imported directly from the translator to the page.

3. Save time and reduce workload

By using integration, you can publish content in every language as simply as in one. Integration is a better option than time-consuming manual work, and you receive ready translations right into your own publishing system. Managing translation orders is quick and easy with a user-friendly interface. This allows you to save time and money and, above all, gain additional peace of mind when the most monotonous part in the language version release process can be eliminated. With aid of a connector, you can import any changes, no matter how big or small, to all language versions of your website or webstore in almost real time.

4. Minimise risks

Furthermore, the likelihood of making mistakes increases when a large number of files are sent back and forth, with internal editors’ modification proposals. With LanguageWire, you don’t need to make any compromises on security. HTTPS-encrypted transfer of data increases security and you can manage the integration between LanguageWire and your system with modern access control.

Our APIs are built to be very stable so you don’t lose any jobs or complete translations in the event of a network outage. With integration, you can send texts for translation securely without a flood of emails and a need to worry about human errors.

5. Higher translation quality

We work as an extension of your business by building a permanent team of project managers, linguists and engineers. By connecting your digital platform to LanguageWire’s system, you will have access to our network of over 7,000 language experts. Our experts translate more than 450 million words per year, in 500 different language pairs. No matter what languages you are looking for or what sector you work in, we’ll bring you in touch with a language expert who best meets your company’s needs.

Interested? Contact us – let’s make translation management easier!

Together, WordPress and its e-commerce plugin WooCommerce are a very popular website and online store platform. Their popularity is easy to understand, as they offer a lot of customisability and countless plugins for a wide variety of needs. However, when it comes to localisation, what needs to be considered?

WordPress and WooCommerce do not offer ready-made support for multilingualism. For localisation, this means you cannot simply start typing in product names in other languages in your online store; using multiple languages always requires the purchase of a separate multilingualism support plugin. Fortunately, these plugins are readily available.

There is a lot of information about the pros and cons of multilingualism plugins, especially from the point of view of web service developers. You can find articles online that compare those ever-so-important load speeds, for instance. So, instead of that, I’ll tell you what we see in customer projects every day and what our customers have told us. We have localised numerous WordPress sites and WooCommerce stores and cooperated with many companies and their developer partners on that front – our own website was also created with WordPress.

Observations from customer projects

Polylang is by far the most popular multilingualism support plugin among our customers. It is also widely recommended by developers. Polylang is simple and does what it promises well and quickly (those load speeds!). It is an excellent choice, especially from the developer’s point of view, but when you need to update and localise content, it has major shortcomings, which I will explain in more detail below. The different language versions of our own website are also produced with Polylang.

Another popular multilingualism support plugin is WPML, and we have long experience in using it. Prior to our website renewal in 2020, the language versions of Delingua’s website had also been produced with WPML. This plugin has many advantages as far as localisation is concerned, such as good export and import functionalities and connectivity with a variety of translation environments. However, from the point of view of development and performance, it has its disadvantages and historical burdens, which is why it is not the best choice for every situation.

Using Polylang

As I mentioned above, Polylang is an excellent tool from the perspective of a website’s technical functionality, with advantages related especially to speed and performance in connection with WordPress updates. However, on the other side of the coin, straight out of the box, Polylang did not really support the localisation process itself. In other words, as a counterbalance to stability and speed, a person updating a website or an online store would have to go through a lot of effort to get localised texts onto the site.

If you wanted to do the actual translation work efficiently and use the translation memories containing the customer’s previous translations, you very quickly found yourself resorting to so-called traditional methods, in other words, copying and pasting. If you wanted to avoid mind-numbing manual work, you could do the translations using Polylang’s interface. However, it did not support the use of translation memories, and translators rarely knew how to use it. This made localisation slower, more expensive and more prone to error.

Since version 3.3, the Pro version of Polylang has supported the export and import of XLIFF files, which has solved some of the problems mentioned above, although the rather complex settings do not always make this feature easy to use. It also has a lot of difficulties with handling ACF fields.

Polylang and Delingua’s translation plugin

We want to serve our customers quickly and flexibly. This does not just mean responding quickly to emails and providing translations flexibly according to the customer’s wishes. It means that we also want to make it easier for our customers to manage their own systems and work with them. That is why we have developed a translation plugin that connects to Polylang. It complements the proven multilingualism tool with functionality that also makes it easy to order localisation and add the localised content to a website or an online store.

With Delingua’s Polylang plugin, you first select the content to be localised (products or other items) and then the languages and the project schedule. Finally, transfer the content to our translation management software with just one click. That is all the customer has to do. There is no need to trouble yourself with email attachments and other inconvenient arrangements. Once the translations are complete, they will automatically be positioned in their correct places on the website.

The customer can choose in advance whether they want to first receive and approve the cost estimate or send the content directly for translation.

Do you want to make it easier to localise the content of your online store and website? Sign up for Delingua’s Polylang plugin, and we can test together how we could use it with your website and plugins!

5 reasons why integration is a good idea

WordPress, WooCommerce and Polylang