One of the tasks we like to automate when building a new site or shop is translation with Weglot.
Gone are the days when you have to enter translations manually, reluctantly adjust one sentence on the Dutch side or get stuck with translations that are not up-to-date. We consider the fact that your translations are always up-to-date to be the biggest advantage of machine translation.
These days you can have websites and shops automatically translated. And not so bad that you get mocked on social media, but fast, good and affordable.
Why we use Weglot
We ourselves have recently started using Weglot for automatic translations. We do this for sites and shops we build new, but also for existing customers. Especially for an extensive, dynamic site that is available in multiple languages, Weglot really is a top solution!
If you're wondering why you should offer your site or shop multilingual in the first place, read our blog about a multilingual shop or site first.
What does that cost?
On this page you can find what it costs to use Weglot.
As you can see, the available packages go by word count, by languages translated and by your requirements for AI translations or professional translators. Trying out a piece of text up to 2,000 words is free.
Good to know: you have to divide the number of words by the number of languages. So suppose your site contains 20,000 words, and you want to translate it into 3 languages, you need a package of 60,000 words.
1. Translate everything automatically or would you rather not?
Weglot works out-of-the-box quite easily. You install the plugin, link the website to your Weglot account, set the right languages and hatseflats: it goes to work for you.
If you do nothing after that, however, everything will be translated. And you may not want that.
Excluding certain pages/URLs and blocks is done as follows: https://burostaal.nl/kennisbank/weglot-urls-uitsluiten/.
Don't translate components: For example, if you do not want to translate your knowledge base, you can choose the option contain = knowledge base. All URLs containing 'knowledge base' will then not be translated.
Excluding blogs is often chosen because blogs and knowledge base articles often contain a huge number of words, so one of the reasons you pay for this type of software is per word count. Since blogs and articles are supportive of the sales process and findability, there is no drama in skipping this part.
2. Exclude specific words
Certain words you will want to exclude from the translation. For example, your company name, company names and brands of others in your shop, product names, certain terms and abbreviations, payment methods and other common terms that are important to the ordering process.
Depending on the quality of the translation, you should always check these types of terms yourself for correctness, just like buttons and contact forms.
Do you have words that should never be translated or should be translated in a specific way?
Setting rules is how you do it: https://burostaal.nl/kennisbank/weglot-vertaalregels/.
3. Delete inactive translations
If you ask Weglot to translate everything, he really does translate everything and saves these translations as well.
Suppose you delete or edit a post, calendar item, blog or page, the original translations are also saved.
Knowing this, you also understand that your translations in Weglot can quickly become polluted. Here, fortunately, they have thought of something.
Deleting inactive items is done as follows: https://burostaal.nl/kennisbank/weglot-inactieve-vertalingen-verwijderen/
If you are near your limit in terms of translated words, it is advisable to check your inactive items. Might just save you another upgrade!
4. Variables like your thank you page
If you have a webshop, all thank you pages are also automatically translated.
The template for this is the same every time, but because it contains different content each time, it is seen as new info. That, of course, eats up your available words.
Certain parts of this type of page are always the same, though. For those parts you can create variables. This makes a huge difference in the number of words translated.
Setting variables is how you do it: https://burostaal.nl/kennisbank/weglot-variabelen-toevoegen/
Something for you or any questions?
All in all, you can use Weglot quite easily and affordably to take a lot of work off your hands. If you want to exclude certain things, you can, but you have to set it up properly first.
Furthermore, it is a piece of cake and your entire shop or site is completely translated in no time (sometimes within minutes). And you have another group of potential customers.
Weglot can be used for WordPress sites (but also for Shopify, for example).
Do you have questions, wishes or are you stuck on something? We'll be happy to see if we can help!
If you have a support bundle with us, we can offset it with that, if desired.
Good luck! Bon chance! Viel Gluck! Buena suerte!
