256 - Multilingual Website Best Practices with Dean Jones of WPML.org - podcast episode cover

256 - Multilingual Website Best Practices with Dean Jones of WPML.org

Apr 17, 202359 min
--:--
--:--
Listen in podcast apps:

Episode description

Dean Jones of WPML.org, one of the leading multilingual plugins for WordPress, shares best practices for translation services on websites from optimizing personally, using AI and multilingual tools.

In This Episode

00:00 - Introduction
03:32 - Greeting to Dean
05:29 - Partners more than ads
09:00 - Sites that need translation
13:52 - Localization
18:09 - Cultural nuances
21:04 - Research
24:54 - AI & WPML plug-in
29:16 - Why not Google
36:25 - How many languages
43:02 - Human translator
47:10 - Recent success story
49:11 - Currencies
53:39 - Future plans

Get all links, resources and show notes at:

https://joshhall.co/256

When you join Web Designer Pro™ (on any tier) you'll get instant access to the new private audio course feeds for:

  • Web Design Business Course
  • Maintenance Plan Course
  • Scale Your Way Course

Join Web Designer Pro™ and enjoy instant access to these courses in audio format along with the full courses inside Pro!

Transcript

[00:00:00] Dean: Let's take an example. I'm located in the US I mean, probably most relevant for, for your audience if I'm in the US, I think the assumption is that if I'm tackling a translation project, it's to maybe reach a European audience. Um, that's the automatic assumption, which is a great assumption because it would be amazing for if you're a US based business to reach, um, an audience in Europe.

[00:00:20] Dean: But even within your immediate demographic, if you look at the US, I mean, you've got plenty of Spanish speakers, Chinese communities, You know, you've got South America, which, which is uh, I think partially Portuguese speak speaking as well. So you've got a wide range of, of uh, you know, foreign language speakers that are fairly close to your own local territory.

[00:00:42] Dean: Um, so even, even if you're an e-commerce business and you maybe don't have the infrastructure to ship to Europe, it doesn't mean abandon the idea of, of a multilingual.

[00:00:54] Josh: Hey friends. Welcome into episode 256 of the Web Design Business podcast. In this one, we're taking a deep dive into a subject that I personally don't know much about and don't have much experience with.

[00:01:06] Josh: I'm just gonna be right up front with. And that is best practices for multilingual websites. So you have a website, and if you want it to be readable in, viewed and understood in different parts of the world with different languages, you probably don't know how to do that by yourself without some sort of tool or translation service.

[00:01:26] Josh: Uh, I've often heard, like, I know quite a few designers who, uh, kind of have like a, a, a sub-service or a secondary service for translation service. So this is something that you could do manually. You could do it with ai, you could do it with tools. What we're really diving into here are the best practices to implement all of these things to make sure the websites that you build for your clients, if and when needed, can be multilingual and it can be read all over the world.

[00:01:52] Josh: Now because I don't know much about this, I wanted to bring on somebody who does know a lot about this, so I'm excited to bring on here, Dean Jones. The company he's with is on the Go Systems, and they are actually the creators of one of the top multilingual plugins for WordPress. You may be familiar with their plugin, W P M L.

[00:02:10] Josh: So in this episode, not only do we talk about some of the benefits of that tool specifically, but. Really, we dive into just best practices overall for making sure your website and the websites you build for clients, again, if and when needed, can have some advanced functionality for multilingual services, uh, for everyone who's viewing and reading the website.

[00:02:30] Josh: And this goes beyond, by the way, just browsers that can do some automatic type of translation. But we all know, like we've all done that, right? You turn a website from like English to Spanish or Spanish to English. Uh, German to English and it's like, okay, yeah, this something, something ain't right here. Um, there are tools and services that can help us take this to the next level.

[00:02:53] Josh: Reason I wanna do this episode is to empower you to do just that when needed. So without further ado, I'm gonna bring on Dean Jones here. And if after this episode, if you feel like you want to check out the plugin Wpml, you can go to josh hall.co/wpml. Uh, I'm really proud to be an affiliate with them now because after getting to know dean here and just what they have going on. They, they really have a, an incredible tool here that I'm excited to, to help everyone out with when it comes to multi multilingual stuff. So I'm gonna stop rambling. Here's Dean. Let's talk multilingual website best practices.

[00:03:31] Josh: I guess where I'd love to start, Dean, is something I, uh, I ask a lot of my guests here on this show, which is when somebody asks you what you do, uh, with your position for Yeah. Uh, what, what is your technical position? Uh, well, it's. 

[00:03:46] Dean: Let's say, let's say on paper, it's, it's a partnerships marketing manager. Um, at the time when I started at the company, I, I came on board more as a, as a partnerships assistant. Um, the reason the word partnerships is popping up there a lot is that, I mean, most of our marketing work is centered around, around partnerships with our partners being predominantly what we call compatibility partners.

[00:04:09] Dean: So, That's just another word for developers, really third party developers. Um, given that, given that we're in the WordPress space, um, a lot of the work we do is, is with other third party developers maintaining compatibility and then, uh, doing a number of marketing, marketing activities around integrations.

[00:04:28] Dean: So, yeah, so I'd say, you know, most of the marketing is partnerships related. Hence the title is Partnerships Marketing Manager. Um, but it encompasses a, a number of other things as. 

[00:04:39] Josh: Yeah. Well, it's interesting you mentioned that right off the top because I do feel like the last. Maybe three years in particular, I've seen a big trend in change in partnerships and utilizing that as a kind of a sales funnel rather than just ads or outbound type of, of advertising.

[00:04:59] Josh: Like there really is so much power. This is something I've learned as a course creator. There's something so powerful about building relationships and. Not only getting access to their audience, but just like mutual beneficial win-win situations for partnerships. Um, so it makes a lot of sense that what you guys are up to is focusing on the, the partnership aspect of sales.

[00:05:20] Josh: I guess. I don't know, you know, it's a little bit different from, from what I'm used to. I'm kind of learning more about it, but I'm definitely taking that more seriously, so I'm glad to hear that's what's working for you guys. 

[00:05:29] Dean: Yeah, totally. Uh, and especially in the WordPress ecosystem, which is really our niche, um, we can say we are in a niche of a niche, so we're working in WordPress, which is a niche in of it, in and of itself, and we are in the translation space within WordPress.

[00:05:42] Dean: So it, it's really. It, it's really, I mean, it's, it's a somewhat small audience compared to, uh, maybe some other bigger, you know, SaaS products. Um, so it, it doesn't always work in our favor to kind of go down the road of, of, uh, you know, kind of paid marketing. Um, we, we, we touch on things like SEO and that, that type of work, um, as part of our marketing strategy.

[00:06:05] Dean: But, but again, most of it is focused on partnerships because especially in the WordPress ecosystem, we kind of rely heavily on, on stable integrations. We rely on themes and plugins working well together. That is kind of the basis of making sure that people's sites, uh, on crashing, um, and that they're happy with the products that they're using.

[00:06:23] Dean: And in order for us to do that, we really have to be in touch with partners and part, and, and especially as a translations plugin. Um, and just for your users to maybe, uh, for your listeners, just to, to touch, to touch on the product itself, we're talking about wpml. Um, I, I, in our case, We're, our plugin is, is usually being installed kind of towards the end of the, of the web design process and put client clients who have a number, have a, have a theme that they've chosen plus a number of plugins that they use, and they're installing W P M L on top of all of that.

[00:06:55] Dean: And we of course, strive to make sure that when that time comes, They still have a site that works, that is still performing well in terms of, of site speed. Um, and, and you know that that is one of our kind of major selling points is that you can install this plugin. It works, um, and it does what you wanted to, wanted it to do.

[00:07:15] Dean: Um, and in order for us to maintain that well, we have to be in touch with partners, um, and. That in and of itself doesn't sound like marketing so much, you know, from a traditional perspective, but it has marketing outcome because the better our partnerships are with our third party developers. The better our products and that is a marketing outcome in and of itself. Yes. So that's how we tend to approach 

[00:07:35] Josh: it. I love that. I, I'm glad we're starting out with this because I get so many questions from my students and other web design business owners who are looking at different marketing strategies, and I think partnerships is, Perhaps the one that is most overlooked.

[00:07:48] Josh: And for the average web designer, you can, let's say you don't do seo, but you partner with somebody who does SEO really well. There you go. That is a sales funnel because it's a mutually exclusive win-win situation. So it's a really interesting point to hit off on. Uh, I do wanna focus on, Translation and that side of websites because one reason I'm glad to talk with you, Dean, is I don't know much at all about this world, so I'm probably gonna have a lot of, uh, FAQ style questions that you guys answer.

[00:08:16] Josh: But I think this will help shed some light for my audience who need and, and need to, or wanna know more about the translation options for websites because again, it's, it's not something I have too much experience with. The couple plugins I chose, Were just, like you said, it was like at the very end of the project and they were like, actually we'd like to, for people to read it in Spanish and maybe a couple other languages.

[00:08:37] Josh: So I just found a free one on WordPress and go live. Uh, I know that's not always the best case, so I would love to start out with. What type of light, uh, websites typically need translation services? I mean, is this something you guys are seeing common across all websites ideally, or is there For sure certain niches that need, uh, website translation, plugin, or tools?

[00:08:59] Dean: Yeah. Um, so it's a good question. Um, I think if we think about web design in general today, the reason for most people creating a website is probably that they wanna sell something, um, and even in a very direct way where they have an e-commerce site and they've got products that they wanna sell. Or maybe it's something slightly more abs abstract, like a, a digital product or a service.

[00:09:20] Dean: But if you've got a site, you're probably trying to sell something. Of course, there is a, a, a cluster of, of sites, which is maybe more focused on maybe just individual projects. You know, like you're a musician or you're an artist and you've got a kind of a portfolio type site. Um, there's still a case for that, but I think.

[00:09:38] Dean: The majority of this kind of the business benefits comes from sites that are selling something, and that's a large portion of sites. Um, you know, if, if a business is gonna invest some money into a website, well they want it to be either, like you say, a funnel to drive, drive leads, or to. Directly sell a product or a service.

[00:09:57] Dean: And when it comes down to that, I mean, if you're a, let's say you're a freelance, uh, web designer, most of the projects you take on are probably gonna be, you know, from a small business, um, who's got something to sell. They need a bit of online presence. Um, And what better way to reach a wider audience than to have a multilingual site, and not only to reach Ari, uh, a wider audience, but to give use, uh, international, uh, users a better experience on your sites.

[00:10:23] Dean: Uh, it kind of puts more faith in, in your product. Um, and then there's a number of other reasons for wanting to do that, but I think predominantly we, we see it, um, we see the need arising in, um, in, in fairly traditional e-commerce type sites. And in, in less cases your kind of portfolio kind of showcase type of sites. But I think both cases have have. 

[00:10:47] Josh: I like that idea of casting a wider net to, to a broader audience. I mean, even if you're just a local business, you still may maybe have a lot of people who don't speak English as their primary language and prefer to view the site in in their language if that's not what they speak, depending on where you're at.

[00:11:02] Dean: Um, totally. Yeah. So, and I think that's a good way to think of it. It's, I think a lot of people assume automatically, okay, well if I'm considering translation and I'm located. If, let's take an example. I'm located in the us I mean, probably most relevant for, for your audience if I'm in the us. I think the assumption is that if I'm tackling a translation project, It's to maybe reach a European audience.

[00:11:24] Dean: Um, that's the automatic assumption, which is a great assumption because it would be amazing for, if you're a US based business to reach, um, an audience in Europe. But even within your immediate demographic, if you look at the US I mean, you've got plenty of Spanish speakers, Chinese communities, uh, you know, you've got South America, which, which is uh, I think partially Portuguese speak speaking as well.

[00:11:46] Dean: So you've got a wide range of, of uh, you know, foreign language speakers that. Fairly close to your own local territory. Um, so even, even if you're an e-commerce business and you maybe don't have the infrastructure to ship to Europe, it doesn't mean abandon the idea of, of a multilingual site. You can very, very easily kind of localize it to your more, uh, immediate audience, which is likely to be multilingual in any case.

[00:12:11] Dean: I mean, I come from South Africa, we've got 11 official languages, you know, so, um, you know, that in itself is a project. Um, but I think. I think again, it kind of comes down to the nature of your business, what kind of infrastructure you have to reach certain audiences. You might not have the, the, the kind of the practical facilities to, uh, if you're selling physical products to ship to, to Europe, you know, maybe that's a kind of a bigger project, but you can always think about your immediate demographic and there's likely to be some opportunity that, that you can take advantage of.

[00:12:42] Dean: And I think that's the, that's the kind of, if you wanna talk in business terms, the competitive advantage that you could gain maybe over some other small businesses. To operate within your immediate space, that if you can tap into, uh, some, some other, some other languages, um, that gives you a bit of competitive advantage.

[00:13:00] Josh: That's a great point. I really never thought about it like this, but this is a great challenge for every web designer to think about, not only as a competitive advantage, like you said right there, Dean, cuz yeah, this could be a like deliverable, this could be a line item in all of your website builds or an add-on that separates you from everybody else.

[00:13:16] Josh: But that idea that just because you serve local clients in Ohio, in my case, doesn't mean that people who don't speak English aren't looking at the website. So, uh, this is a great reminder. That. Yeah, there's, there's room for this and a time for this for I think probably every website at this point. And I'm actually curious is, is access, I was gonna ask this later, but is accessibility involved with multilingual sites as well? When it comes to, like, if a Spanish speaking person goes to a website that is only in English, is that, does that branch into the real of accessibility? 

[00:13:52] Dean: Um, I mean, I guess so to some degree. Um, I. Yeah, I would just kind of put that in the, in the broader topic of what we would call I 18 n or localization. Um, localization. I mean, I mean, it's, it's, it's kind of a, a cluster of topics, you know? Yeah. Going multilingual that also localizing, so I think. The localizing part is kind of the, the nuanced part of it. 

[00:14:17] Dean: So you can always make a site multilingual. Like for example, our plugin has got automatic translation features, um, which you can use machine translation to quickly translate your content, and that's very nice for certain use cases, but it doesn't necessarily mean that your site is localized.

[00:14:32] Dean: Now, localized means that it's also culturally in line, um, with certain demographics who speak certain languages. Um, so, and, and, and there's numerous examples of this. Um, you know, there's a certain tone that one would speak. I mean, I was working on a project with, uh, the Chinese demographic, which is very complex.

[00:14:50] Dean: I don't speak Chinese myself. And if I just go and translate a site into Chinese, well, I, I don't understand the nuances of the way that the language is delivered. Um, uh, so I, I think may, I dunno if that answers your question, but I think that's kind of where maybe the accessibility part comes in. It's kind of, you have to consider more than just, you know, the actual practical translation of the site, but also how that language comes across culturally.

[00:15:17] Dean: Yeah, there, there's a number. I mean, if, if anyone wants to dive into the topic, I mean it would be localization. Um, I'm not a localization expert. Um, but if you, if you want to investigate, investigate the topic, I think it's very interesting. Um, and, and that's kind of where the human, the human element comes in.

[00:15:33] Josh: Um, so that's a little more integrating like slang or cultural dialect or, or words. Yeah. Somebody might say in the UK where we may, may not say the same thing, uh, in the US or, yeah, I mean that, yeah, 

[00:15:45] Dean: that, that's kind of like the, the, I guess the easiest way to conceptualize it is actually just using the English language, the US versus uk it's, it, there's not only the spelling differences, but you know, like I can, I can relate it back to South African, South Africa. We, we don't call it traffic lights. We call them robots.

[00:16:02] Dean: I know it's bizarre, but that's kind of like a localization example. Yeah. It's like if, if, if I'm, if I. Speaking English to South Africans, I would use, the tone would be different, the language would be different. I would refer to certain things in a different way. Um, and these are fairly nuanced things, um, but I think that's kind of a nice way to think of. You know, the, the multilingual topic beyond just translation itself and Yeah. 

[00:16:30] Dean: And in turn, hopefully making it more accessible and approachable, um, to audiences who, yeah, when they, when they're, when they're engaging with your content, they would like to feel like you've actually spent the time, um, Really kind of catering it to them culturally, not just, you know, not just physically or like practically translating.

[00:16:52] Dean: Yeah. Cause I think anyone can do that these days. It's fairly simple, um, with, with machine translation. But to really do a good job of it, you've gotta consider the, the localization part of it. And 

[00:17:02] Josh: I guess this may come to like, come down to how the copy is written in the website. It like, I guess a translation plugin I gather can only do as good as the job, as the content is written. Uh, so those cultural differences. For example, uh, on my honeymoon, my wife and I, we met this English couple from the UK and we made friends with them and they actually came and visited us. Until that point, I did not know that CHIPS in the UK were french fries in the us. 

[00:17:31] Josh: When he ordered, I think we, we were out somewhere and he got a, we got a burger together and they got, they said, does it come with chips? And we're like, oh, well they come with french fries. And they're like, oh, well that's, that's what we call chips. So it was like that kind of thing. If I were to write french fries or, or excuse me, if I were to write chips in some sort of content, I don't know when I would reference chips.

[00:17:51] Josh: Uh, I wouldn't put that past myself, you know, I'd be like, French, that's UK then it's french fries. I met french fries. So, yeah. That's really interesting. So I guess it comes. There reason, or it maybe stands to reason that you might want, if you are catering to a global audience, you may want to keep things what, maybe like less cultural dependent?

[00:18:09] Dean: This, this is where it really gets interesting and, uh, if you start considering the topic of seo, I think this is where these kind of nuances become very important. Um, and this is where you can really take advantage, I think, of business opportunities. Um, Again, I won't go, I don't wanna go too deeply into the topic of seo, so I'm gonna kind of assume that, hopefully your listeners have a sense of what that is, but yeah.

[00:18:33] Dean: But if you, if you've got an English site and we just use your example of, of the chips and the fries, that in itself is, is already an opportunity for you to have better visibility in a search engine. So if you've, if you, if you are selling chips, um, on your site and you would like to have visibility to a US audience, 

[00:18:53] Dean: Well, you would want to make sure that you've got a version that you, you've got content, a version of your content that is speaking about fries, that is for your US audience, and then another version of the content, which is chips, which is for your uk, your UK audience, because you can assume that if someone in the UK is looking for this product, which is fries or chips, they're gonna be searching for chips online. They're not gonna be searching for fries. 

[00:19:19] Dean: And if you only have content on your site, which is fries, Well, you're missing an opportunity there. You're selling something that they're looking for, but you're simply not localizing your content correctly. And now you can imagine how interesting that gets on a, on a fully multilingual scale, where's not only fries and chips, but you're adding.

[00:19:38] Dean: Actually secondary languages, which also have the same kind of nuances. Um, so you want to be able to know, well, what are pe, what are people searching for in different demographics so that I can target my content to them on search engines. Um, and I think that's a really big, um, a major kind of business opportunity whether you're running a small business or if you're a freelancer, you know, doing projects for, for businesses, this is a really important thing, uh, to. 

[00:20:04] Josh: Yeah. That's fascinating. I mean, I, I was trying to think how this would apply to either my business or most web designers. I think when it comes to like website services, seo, things like that, that's pretty globally received as the same terms.

[00:20:18] Josh: But those cultural differences, particularly with food or maybe clothing or things like that, that's where. I could see this getting very, very tricky. I really have never thought about that when it comes to fries versus chips on seo. Like that's fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. What do, uh, what do the UKs call chips then? I forget. 

[00:20:36] Dean: Well, yeah, I think they, they, the UK calls it chips and it's the states that calls it fries, if I remember. Correct. What, 

[00:20:40] Josh: what do, uh, what do UK What, sorry, what do UKs call french fries? Or excuse me. What do UK call chips then? What are 

[00:20:48] Dean: chips to the. Yeah, I, I can't even remember. I'm not even based in the uk, so I've got no idea.

[00:20:53] Dean: But that's, I 

[00:20:54] Josh: know, I know you're a bit of a, uh, I know you're a bit of a world traveler and working all. Yeah, but I 

[00:20:58] Dean: actually, it's a good question, but this is, this is kind of an interesting part of it. This is the research that one needs to do actually, um, is, is if you're running a business or if you're creating content for a business, this is a big part of the research is to actually.

[00:21:12] Dean: You know, become a little bit of a specialist of the area that you're working in. So if you're designing a site Yeah. For someone who's got a clothing business, well, you need to become a little bit of a clothing expert. You need to understand that, that that field, and if you are proposing to translate a site into multiple languages, well that, that's part of the research.

[00:21:29] Dean: You gotta understand the termin, you gotta understand the terminology. You gotta understand culturally, You know what, what the, the audience who's reading or engaging with your site in a secondary language would expect to see, or what it is that they're typically searching for on search engines. And I think there's multiple, there's multiple ways to approach this because not everyone, I also come from a freelance background where I was designing WordPress sites for, um, For small businesses mostly, and, and I'm sure you, you can attest to this, you, it's hard to be a jack of all trades and master them all.

[00:22:02] Dean: You tend to be a jack of all trades and yeah, kind of the master of none, which is not always a great approach. But I think if at least if you have a fundamental understanding of the subjects, it gives you a bit of leverage with your clients to be, to at least suggest these kind of things. Yeah. And if we go back to the partnerships, You can have your, you can kind of build a small team.

[00:22:21] Dean: You've maybe got your go-to SEO guy who really knows his stuff, but at least you as the web designer, once you've completed the project, you can say, well, look, we've done a project in a primary language. You guys, I see there's probably potential here to reach a, reach a wider global audience. I've got an s e o guy who knows how to do this.

[00:22:39] Dean: I can give you the concept, you know, on, on why this is great for you, why there's potential here, um, and help you execute that. Um, so I think, yeah, it's important. I think it's really important to understand conceptually, you know, what are, what are the benefits around us. You don't necessarily, I mean, it would be great if you also know how to do it, but.

[00:22:59] Dean: Again, it, it, it depends, like, uh, for me it was a, it was a great, it was a, it was a great kind of business opportunity for me as a freelancer to have enough knowledge to be able to say to clients like, I can, I can offer this as an extra kind of value add to my web services, right? I'm not just gonna leave you with the site, but let's think beyond that. Like, let's kind of take, take the business, take as much ad advantage of these kind of low hanging fruit as possible. But you have to know, you have to know. The subject of cause. 

[00:23:27] Josh: Right, right. Well, and speaking of an knowing about the subject, I'm sure everyone in the UK is like shouting out loud that in the UK they call chips crisps. There we go. So I just looked that up just for confirmation. I remember it now. Now I remember Dan, my friend from the uk, uh, telling me that they call him Chris and, and maybe there's some other, 

[00:23:46] Dean: the Chris is like, but the Fri Yeah, but the chips is like the fries. 

[00:23:53] Josh: By the way, anyone listening who, uh, may be in, uh, in that part of the world across the prawn, at least in, in, uh, in England, let us know if there's other terms. I would love to know that you can always drop a comment where this, uh, this podcast is. I'm Josh hall.co.

[00:24:07] Josh: I'm kind of curious, so AI is such a huge conversation right now. I'm sure this gets into the realm of translation with what AI kicks out. Do you find. Because I, one, one thing that I recommend for my students when it comes to AI is to use it for like content generation for either dummy content or just for assistance.

[00:24:27] Josh: I think AI is a great tool in, in your toolkit as a web designer, that's not gonna replay, I really don't believe it's gonna replace us. I think it's a great tool to add on to your toolbox when it comes to content, do you find that AI writes things and kicks out things that. Pretty well broad across all cultures in all content. Um, well, yeah, what's your thoughts on AI and, and translation and how that correlates? 

[00:24:54] Dean: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think for us, what I can only speak to again, what, what W P M L does, um, and we. What our plugin does is that it, it, it has an option for automatic translation, which I guess you can call, we can call it, it's either automatic translation, machine translation, AI translation.

[00:25:12] Dean: That's kind of, you know, we intermingle the terminology. Um, but if we're talking about the AI topic, I mean, what, what, what we find works best and, and. This is kind of what we believe at least sets our plugin apart from, from various other options, is that we give you the option to, to kind of have best of both.

[00:25:31] Dean: So we've got a translation interface, which allows you to. You can choose to manually, uh, input your translations, kind of as like a, call it like a tms, like a translation management system to some degree. So it's just the interface that allows you to take your primary language and manually translate it into a secondary language in a simple interface.

[00:25:50] Dean: That's one option. Your second option is to use automatic translation, so, We've got a proxy that sends translations through, uh, through either depot, uh, Google Translates or um, Microsoft. Um, and. Yeah, so I mean, that would kind of be the, the AI part is where we send packet packets of information through our proxy, through those, um, through those translation services, automatic translation services, and then it sends it back and kind of voila you have, you have your stuff automatically translated.

[00:26:23] Dean: Um, and as we touched on earlier, It's, it's not perfect. Um, so again, this is what you, you, what it tends to often miss out is the localization aspect. Um, and that's really, I was just gonna 

[00:26:37] Josh: say, and aside to that point, as I've had, some of my colleagues are like, one of their primary services is translation services for websites. So a project may take months just to get the translation services correct. 

[00:26:50] Dean: Yeah, exactly. So what we have is like, we've got those two options, but then we've got this middle ground, which is the option to, uh, review automatic translations. So you'll find there's ano, there's a number of other plug-ins on the market that kind of either offer one or the other.

[00:27:03] Dean: It's either, it's a, just an, an interface. To apply translations manually. In other words, you need someone who speaks the language to be able to actually physically go onto the site and input the translations themselves. Maybe they even use Google Translate and just copied and pasted, depending on how lazy they are.

[00:27:19] Dean: But the point being that it's usually that workflow or a, um, or just a fully automatic, uh, translation workflow. Gotcha. But we've, we've got the option. You can, you can send your content for automatic translation and then you can review it thereafter. So that kind of saves the bulk of the work. It's almost like the way people use chat g p t these days, you know, it's, it, it, it does, it does the bulk of the work, but you need that kind of final revision at the end to really refine it.

[00:27:48] Dean: Yeah. And that's what, that's what our plugin allows to do. And I think that's where you find a really nice balance. You have the time saving aspect, um, and, and actually money saving aspect. Uh, automatic translation is a lot more cost effective than having a human translate all your content. Sure. So you can get the bulk of your trans, your, your content translated through automatic translation.

[00:28:09] Dean: And then we've got a system to, to, to easily review it. Um, you can either review it before the post, actually the, the secondary language post is actually published, or you can just have it published straight away and review it afterwards. You could either review it yourself. Or we've got an interface, a translation management interface where we can connect you, um, with a third party translator or a third party reviewer who can actually review that, that content for you as well.

[00:28:34] Dean: And I think that's where the synergy is really nice, is that you kind of get that best of both. And there's d there's different applications for, or for, for different types of, of use cases. Like, I wouldn't say that every single, every single project should be treated in this way, but I think, at least from my perspective, that's kind of the nicest middle ground between the two translation 

[00:28:54] Josh: methods. Yeah. That's cool. Um, uh, you mentioned Google Translate there. I'm gonna play devil's advocate and ask you like if I'm, if I'm putting myself in the shoes of a customer who this is an option as an add-on or value add, but they're like, why do I need a WordPress multilingual plugin when I can just rely on Google Translate? Uh, what would you say? What would 

[00:29:16] Dean: you say? Look, it's a question that comes up, comes up often, and, and this always, this goes back again to, to the nature of that person's site and their own particular context. Um, Again, it, it goes back to the idea that it, it kind of goes back to the whole localization idea.

[00:29:33] Dean: You, you're not giving your user the best experience. If you're just expecting that Google is gonna automatically translate the content of your site, firstly, it, it never does it perfectly. Um, there might be certain elements of your site that, that it can't pick up and are not, translate it properly. Um, it's probably also a case of if you've.

[00:29:51] Dean: Certain content that is meant to be understood in a certain way by a certain demographic. Google's not gonna do that perfectly. I mean, to, to be honest. It's gonna do enough of a job to allow someone to make sense of what it is they're looking at, if they're wanting to translate it into another language.

[00:30:09] Dean: But from a, from a user experience perspective, You don't get those nuances. Um, so again, it, it comes down to, to what, as a business or as an individual, whatever you, whatever your particular case is, it comes down to what it is you want to achieve. And I think again, If you, if you look back to, if you look at the, the e-commerce example, I think you'd be shooting yourself in the foot.

[00:30:31] Dean: Um, if you just would expect, uh, users to use, you know, Google Transla, Google Translators are kind of a free service to. To give an automatic translation to your products. Um, not only that, like a checkout experience and, and, and all of those other, right. Kind of important aspects. Aspects of, yeah. Like all, all of the element, all the parts of the, the user experience, um, of your website, I think.

[00:30:55] Dean: Yeah, like I said, you'd be shooting yourself on the foot if you just expected Google Translate to do that. Well, and, and this is, this is where I think the, the real value comes in. Um, that's one part. And again, back to the SEO parts, Google Translate. You don't own those translations, it's just translating the front end so there's no SEO benefits there.

[00:31:14] Dean: So if you're run, if you, if you're running a site with thousands of products on it and you want people to, if you want people from all parts of the world to be able to actually access that content, content through a search engine, Google translate's not gonna help you because that's just the front end, uh, translation.

[00:31:29] Dean: You actually need to have the content, and that's what our plugin does. It stores the translations in a database. You're actually, you've. Effectively a duplicated version of, of your primary language into a secondary language, which is optimized for seo. It's optimized, um, you know, for the, it's, well, let's call it just localized, uh, for your audience.

[00:31:52] Dean: Um, and, and that's, that's where, you know, the real value comes in. But again, maybe that's not a, that's maybe not applicable for everyone. Um, but I think if you, if if you're running a site that you want to generate leads or business, um, of some sort, you would probably wanna opt for, um, a plugin that allows you to take full control of the translations yourself. 

[00:32:16] Josh: I'm, this is really challenging me to, to implement this on my side because I do have a global audience. Um, I'm just looking, so the last. Okay, so for the last month, my visitors were mostly us, K, uk, Canada, Australia. So English speaking, but then I very quickly go into the Netherlands, Germany, Philippines, France, South Africa, Italy, Spain, Poland, so like all over the eu.

[00:32:50] Josh: So yeah, this makes me think, and there's a decent amount of percentage here. That are in this bracket. So yeah, this really makes, I'm challenged to really make my site more multilingual apart from just the browser options to translate. Which, speaking of that, I mean, I don't know. You really don't have much control or any control, I guess, of the browser translations.

[00:33:14] Josh: And also I don't, what is Firefox or Safari or God forbid, ie. Like what, I don't know anything about how they translate. Do they translate different than. 

[00:33:25] Dean: Um, it depends what you mean by that. Um, I mean, are, are you talking about the browser actually doing translation or the browser survey? Yeah, like if you're, if 

[00:33:35] Josh: you're in Chrome, you, oh, I guess you could use Google Translate on different browsers as well.

[00:33:40] Josh: Yeah. 

[00:33:40] Dean: Yeah. I guess, yeah, 

[00:33:41] Josh: obviously that's how much I know about this side of things. Not much like is it browser related or do you go to Google to use Google translation? 

[00:33:48] Dean: But, but this brings up, this brings up a little thought. Um, browsers do play a role as well because what browsers can allow you to do is they at least, uh, kind of, uh, more recent versions of, of browsers, which most people around the world use, is that they will, they've, they've got IP detection.

[00:34:07] Dean: So if you're. If, like, I'm in Germany now, so when I search stuff on Google, most of the results come up actually in German. Um, so, and, and, and that, that goes back to the search engine aspect of it. But if you've got a site, what W P M L allows you to do, uh, is kind of the same thing where you can have a setting that, um, depending on where you are.

[00:34:33] Dean: And if you've engaged the setting in, in W P M L, it can check the, the, the browser language and serve the user, the, the correct language automatically. So if I'm, if I've got a site, if I've got a site in English and in Spanish, and I've got, and I've got that setting enabled in W P M L and I've got a Spanish user in Spain, um, and.

[00:34:59] Dean: Search for something and they find my site, they find my site on a search engine and they open it up, it, it'll display the Spanish version to them straight away without them even having to, uh, to change the language switcher. Yeah. Um, so I mean, that, that's, that when you're talking about browsers, I mean, that's kind of another part of like the user experience where even the browser comes into play.

[00:35:19] Dean: Yeah. Um, where it can detect, it can detect user ip. Um, so yeah, there, there. Again, it's, there's, there's various kind of benefits beyond just the pure translation of content. Um, where it goes into areas of, of user experience it goes into. Um, yeah, I mean I think user experience, the biggest user experience and SEO are probably kind of the two real, real major, um, kind of benefits that you can get. Um, that just doing a simple Google translator's not gonna give. 

[00:35:51] Josh: Gotcha. And I'm curious, I do wanna maybe dive into some specifics of the plugin, and I think this will help really shed some light on multilingual. Uh, services and translation in general, because, again, I don't know too much about this. I haven't had a chance to play around with W P M L myself yet, so some of my questions would be, maybe these are covered again on like an f FAQ or something, but if someone does the out of the box version on this, how many languages are covered?

[00:36:18] Josh: I imagine it sounds like there's a, maybe like multiple tiers to get more advanced. Is that right? With how the plugin advanced? Well, 

[00:36:24] Dean: actually we, we don't really base our tier upon languages. Um, okay, so what I mean, it's, I can't actually remember the exact, uh, amount of o of languages that we offer, but it's, it's, it's most languages out there.

[00:36:38] Dean: Um, so, but this is also dependent, um, on if you, if you're using automatic translation, it's essentially dependent on, um, on the translation service that it's going through. So, like Depot is slightly more limited in terms of the languages that it offers. Um, Google Translates is kind of, has the widest scope.

[00:36:56] Dean: Um, and I think Microsoft's, I'm not actually entirely sure, but I think Microsoft is somewhere in between, maybe even slightly less than depot. So if you're using automatic translation, what you just need to check is that the language that you're wanting to translate is actually supported by that translation engine, but it covers a pretty broad scope.

[00:37:13] Dean: But in terms of our plugin, if you wanted to use, say like the manual workflow, you could effectively use any language you want. Um, you could even, I mean, we even allow for custom languages. So example, for example, if you're. I don't know, in, in South Africa, and we have 11 languages, most of which are kind of indigenous type languages.

[00:37:33] Dean: You could even get around, you know, including one of those languages, um, on your site. But you'd have to do, you'd have to use the manual workflow, so you'd be able to, to choose. I want to add a custom language. You can specify what that is, like maybe Zulu, and if you're a Zulu speaker, well, you can actually do that.

[00:37:50] Dean: You can have a Zulu version of your sites. You won't be able to do it on Depot because Depot doesn't support Zulu. But if you rarely wanted to, um, W P M L would allow for that. You just have to, to, to use a custom language, um, and have a human actually, you know, translate the site for you. Gotcha. So, so the options are pretty much endless.

[00:38:11] Dean: Um, and yeah, like I said, we don't. In terms of the automatic translation, we, we have a credit system. So you buy X amount of credits, Dal takes slightly more credits. Google Translate kind of it, well, if you talk, talk about it in, in order of expense, Dal's most expensive, then it would be, uh, Google Translates, and then Microsoft.

[00:38:33] Dean: Um, so it depends on your use cases. D l tends to be more accurate. Google translator's all good. Um, and Microsoft. You know, it's kind of more your, call it your more budget option. Uh, should you want that? Yeah. So your, your expense, like in terms of our licenses, our licenses are fixed amount every year. But if you are using, uh, automatic translation, you just have to consider a how, how much content do you have on your sites?

[00:38:57] Dean: Be what, uh, what's translation, uh, service you'd want to use. Automatic translation service you'd want to use. Um, and we have like a calculator on our site to help you with that. And that would roughly determine, um, what your expense would be. But that's also not a recurring expense. So if you just want to translate, I don't know, into one other language, and that's it.

[00:39:20] Dean: Then it would be a once off expense to do that. Um, and the translations are, are held in the database. It's not like you have to now pay every single month to maintain, uh, maintain those trans translations. I see. Would only start costing you more should you want to add more languages. Um, a as you go. Um, so yeah.

[00:39:37] Dean: Where's, where's the, uh, 

[00:39:38] Josh: where's the calculator by the way? You mentioned the calculator. That'd be a great, we can link to that resource. 

[00:39:43] Dean: Yeah. Gimme one second. I'll pull that up. Um, 

[00:39:49] Josh: Um, I'm actually looking for it on the site right now. I'm not seeing this yet. Well, actually, 

[00:39:53] Dean: yeah, so if you actually go to our pricing page, um, we've got a little bit of a, a kind of a simple calculator there. It'll tell you how much credits you need, but then I'm gonna give you a more in-depth one as well. Um, let me share it to you in the chat. So if you go to our pricing page, um, That's kind of more in comparison to our, our competitors, what you'd be looking at. And if I'm okay, if I remember correctly, there's a little, um, a little section at the bottom that gives you a, a credit estimate, but I'm just gonna check.

[00:40:23] Dean: Okay, I see that. Yeah. Um, I'm just gonna check. I believe we added a calculator to our. Yeah. And I can make 

[00:40:33] Josh: sure Translation page. Yeah. Cause I can, I'll add that to the, to the show notes for this episode. That'll probably a great, great resource, especially for those who want to get a little more custom with this. Uh, if they feel like just one language would be the. The benefit. 

[00:40:51] Dean: Yeah. Um, let me pop it over to you just, just after, if that's okay. Yeah, yeah. No problem. Cool. Yeah, yeah, it is. It is there somewhere. 

[00:41:00] Josh: Yeah. We find, we'll find it put on there. Then you can talk to the team and say, Hey, let's get this thing on, on the main menu.

[00:41:05] Dean: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Cause we did, we did have a few clients, uh, ask about it because sometimes it's, it's a little bit arbitrary to think about it, just in terms of credits. You kind of want to see exactly, you know, based on the size of your site, you know. And based on the, on the translation, uh, service you want to use roughly what that would kind of cost you.

[00:41:23] Dean: Also worth not also worth noting though, that our, um, our licenses come with, with free credits as well. Um, so if you're, if you're buying a W P M L license, um, you get, I think, let me check the pricing again. Uh, but it's, you get a fairly large package of, of free credits. Um, gotcha. We, we say like enough to translate kind of.

[00:41:46] Dean: Your average site, which has, you know, a couple of posts, uh, a couple of pages, um, for sure, maybe not a, maybe not a massive e-commerce site, but it will get you, it'll get you somewhere as a start and that comes complimentary with, with the subscription. And then of course, you can kind of top up as you go.

[00:42:01] Dean: And they don't expire either. So you can just hold onto your credits, you can transfer your credits, uh, to various sites that you've registered on your license. Um, so it's pretty, it's pretty. 

[00:42:11] Josh: That's cool. Yeah, I was just kinda curious what the customization aspects look like of all that, because it seems like you could, this could really be configured to whatever deed you have, whether it's out of the box or whether it's more in depth, and it actually kind of leads me to a question I was wondering about.

[00:42:27] Josh: Earlier I mentioned some of my colleagues who either have come from or are doing the translation services on a deeper level. How, how have things changed for them in the wake of AI and plugins like this? Like, do you, are these type, like, is there still a very important role for a human translator, website, developer, designer, and then to use this tool in conjunction with that? Uh, what, what are your thoughts on where like the web design translators fit into to. 

[00:42:56] Dean: Yeah. So from my perspective, and at least from our perspective as a company, we still place a huge amount of value on, on human translators. Um, and that's actually been one of the big, kind of, uh, selling points o of our plugin is that over the years we've built up this database of translation services, um, which like you said, are companies and individuals who, this is their, this is their profession.

[00:43:18] Dean: Um, and what, what we allow is for two things. One, either you can. You can connect with them on the basis that they're gonna translate your entire sites, uh, call it manually, in which case you're probably a company that's prioritizing the localization aspect. You really need the human elements. Um, we've got a translation management system that actually connects you directly to our, to our database of, um, or rather, we have a database of translation services and you could pick which one is suitable for you.

[00:43:48] Dean: And our translation management interface allows you to easily connect with them. Um, So that they can access the content of your site, kind of as a translation manager, so to speak. Gotcha. Which is nice. Um, you know, it, you don't actually need to know a person, you know, you don't need to know a person yourself or like do much investigation yourself and then create a user pro profile for this person and go through that whole process.

[00:44:12] Dean: We've got a fairly nice interface that facilitates all of that, and, and that's nice. Like I said. For if, if you, if you wanted a site to be fully human translated. But again, for us, where I think at the moment the big value is, is in, is in the translation review. Um, so, you know, clients are slowly starting to shift over more towards automatic translation.

[00:44:36] Dean: Um, and we are promoting that as well because it is a really great solution. And, you know, this is kind of the direction that most thing that, that, that most. Not just translation that most things are going towards is kind of automation and automate. Yeah, exactly. But where, but in the context of translation, I think the human, the human element is still really important, which is why we are still maintaining a full database of translation services.

[00:44:59] Dean: Um, we've actually got an individual at the company who like manages that entire side of the business. Um, it, it's really important for us and it's also really important for us that. We make sure that our translation, uh, services are still getting, uh, you know, a fair amount of work from our clients. I think just at the moment it's, it's gravitating more towards review kind of work.

[00:45:21] Dean: Gotcha. Where Mo Yeah, where most clients are happy to, uh, to use, use automatic translation, but still want that review. And we still recommend that, um, if you really kind of want the best, the best product with the most business benefits. I think you're gonna need to get a human in there at, at some stage of, of, of the process.

[00:45:42] Dean: Um, and if you don't, like I said, I think you're just missing out on potential, um, especially SEO potential and other business potential. Um, yeah, that just kind of requires a human, so that, that's our general, that's our general 

[00:45:54] Josh: stance on it. Yeah, I love that approach. We've covered some awesome ground on this Dean already. I mean, we've really covered a lot of the main questions that I had with the reasons why, uh, multilingual sites are important, what type of clients could use them. I'm very challenged by the idea that just because you have local businesses with local clients doesn't mean that you just need to have English, for example.

[00:46:16] Josh: Uh, so that's really, really interesting. I'm, I'm definitely, I'm. Poking around and getting more familiar with this plugin, W P M L, and what you guys have going on. I, this is really, really, I mean, I, I, like I said, I had played around with a couple free ones, but this is the most comprehensive and like user friendly it looks like.

[00:46:32] Josh: Uh, so I'm really, really excited to, uh, to have this as a. In my tool set and in my toolbox for a lot of my students and colleagues who might need this as well. I do. I, I know you guys have something else in the works I wanna ask about, but before we get to that, I, one final question I have would be, what is like a recent case study or maybe like a success story of someone who used this and it really helped?

[00:46:57] Josh: Build their business for somebody who's still on the fence on whether this is worth it. Um, do you have like a success story recent that you can think of that, uh, you know, this really helped either grow their business or grow sales or anything like that? 

[00:47:10] Dean: Yeah. Uh, so we actually recently worked on a project, um, around charities. So we were offer, we were offering charities the opportunity to get it provided that they could. Motivate their case that we would give a complimentary version of W P M L to them and they'll kind of give us, um, a little bit of feedback, um, on how to kind of change things for them. Um, because of course, charities we know are, are usually don't have much funding, they're not big businesses.

[00:47:38] Dean: Um, and we thought it would be an, an interesting, um, an interesting kind of case study for ourselves to see what impact, uh, translation could have, uh, for. Uh, various types of charities or NGOs. Um, I wasn't driving that project forward, but, um, one of my colleagues was, and I've kind of been seeing a little bit of the feedback coming in and it's been overwhelmingly positive.

[00:48:01] Dean: Um, again, we are not gonna have so much like figures here, you know, like, you know, our, our business went 10 x from, from, you know, from going multilingual. But we definitely had a lot of, you know, really, really positive feedback to say, well, Donations, donations increased because they were able to kind of reach a broader audience.

[00:48:18] Dean: They had bigger scope. Um, more people could find, find what it is they're do doing from different parts of the world. And again, this is a. This is a case where, yeah, they're not, they're not selling you something, but the broader they, the broader they reach, the better. Um, yeah. That's kind of like the primary driver for them is like, the more people we can reach, well that, the more money we can get, get in to go towards, uh, our, our charity work.

[00:48:42] Josh: Um, I mean that really, that what you just said is, To me the most important thing, the broader the reach, if you have a business, especially if it's an online business, like or non-profit like donations. Yeah. The broader the reach the better otherwise, because you don't wanna leave people out. It's, it's very similar to accessibility in the way of like, you don't wanna leave people out if they wanna Yeah.

[00:49:01] Josh: To spy your service or donate or whatever it is. I didn't even think about that. But how does that work with currencies, uh, with, with different currencies? Does that change the pricing and 

[00:49:11] Dean: all that? Yeah, so that's another, that's another big aspect and that's a huge part of our work actually at W P M L. So, um, I mean, for anyone that knows WordPress, I mean, your biggest, your biggest e-commerce plugin and almost the monopoly in the space is WooCommerce. Pretty much anyone who's using WordPress and is building e-commerce sites is using WooCommerce. We have a, we have a specific module called WooCommerce Multilingual, um, which our team developed in-house and we maintain it.

[00:49:36] Dean: Um, and this is a plugin that does two things. We actually have a free version of the, of the plugin, which is worth noting. Um, the free version. Does multicurrency specifically, So it's called, if you wanted to check it out, on, on the WordPress repository, the, the, the free version is called W Commerce, multilingual and Multicurrency, and that's, that's a fairly simple plugin.

[00:50:00] Dean: It what it does, it, it allows you to add a currency switcher to your, to your WooCommerce store. Um, gotcha. So that doesn't have the multilingual part in it. You need W P M L for that. But if you just wanted to have the currency switcher, which is also an ipo, obviously a critical aspect of if you're selling stuff globally, right?

[00:50:18] Dean: You, you need to consider that. Um, and that allows you to kind of toggle your currencies. In whatever way is most suitable for your business. So depending on where you, where you are selling, you'd want to have X amount of currencies there. And of course, you'd want to maintain exchange rates. Um, a big thing is like you don't wanna lose out, you don't wanna lose out on exchange rate fluctuations.

[00:50:38] Dean: So it allows you either to manually, manually, um, change or exchange rates or it connects to, um, the various services, which actually updates. The currency. What update the exchange rates on your store automatically. Um, through like a little api, which is integrated. Um, so that, that's kind of the multicurrency parts.

[00:51:00] Dean: Um, plus you can also do other things like, you know, shipping costs to various parts of the world is gonna differ if you shipping from shipping from, oh gosh, if you're shipping from America to South Africa versus America to. Um, yeah, I don't know. To Europe, you're gonna have vastly different 

[00:51:15] Josh: what a, what a value add did not have to do that manually. If that takes care of a lot of that. My god. Yeah. Well, so, so 

[00:51:21] Dean: that, so that part of it you would do somewhat manually because of course you'd wanna see, depending on, depending on what services you're using to, to do your postage. You can set those into your store yourself.

[00:51:31] Dean: Um, that would depend on who you're using. But in terms of the exchange rates, I mean, no one wants to really go through the headaches of like checking exchange rates all the time and manually updating that. That's whether the api, the API comes in and that of course makes sure that you're not. You know, you're not losing out, uh, based on fluctuations.

[00:51:49] Dean: Yeah. So that's a major, that's a major, uh, part, part of running, you know, a, a global e-commerce store. And then the layer on top of that is of course, the multilingual part. So that, that module paired with W P M L kind of gives you that full e-commerce package where you've got a, uh, an e-commerce store in multiple languages with multiple currencies. Um, which, yeah, if you're selling, if you're selling stuff globally using WooCommerce, I. It's kind of a no-brainer. 

[00:52:17] Josh: Yeah, well I have that, uh, I just checked it out and got that listed down to make sure we include in the show notes cuz I didn't even think about that. My gosh. Yeah, that's a huge part of it though.

[00:52:26] Josh: Yeah, that's 

[00:52:26] Dean: a good, that's a good first start. I mean, even, like I said, even if you're in, if you're in the US and you're only, maybe you've got an e-commerce though that's only in English, um, but you still want the option for, for users. You know, surrounding areas to, to be able to, to purchase from your store, um, without, you know, going multilingual, you've still got at least that option, um, which is the multicurrency aspect.

[00:52:48] Dean: Yeah. Um, it's, it's always, I mean, if you've got an e-commerce store, it's always a good, it's always a good start. 

[00:52:53] Josh: Yeah, well Dean, I consider me informed. Man, this has been great. I really, I really learned a lot in this and this has challenged the way I've thought about multi-site, cuz I'll be honest, I feel a little ignorant coming into this conversation, thinking that multi-site was just for people like in the EU who had a lot of different languages nearby, but.

[00:53:12] Josh: Uh, my gosh, everyone could use this definitely as a global brand or a global product or service. So yeah, this is really cool. I love what you're up to. I, I love, um, really kind of the mission of what you guys are up to with the importance of having somebody as a, uh, the, the human element of translation services, but along with all the automations you guys are working on. So, yeah, this is cool. I, I wanna throw it to you, uh, before we end here. Where would you like people to go to check you out and what's, uh, what's 

[00:53:39] Dean: ahead? Yeah, so, well, the company I work for is called On the Go Systems. We've got two products, the main one being wpml, which you can check out@wpml.org. Um, that is our, uh, translation plugin, which is kind of the main focus of the business.

[00:53:53] Dean: We've also got another plugin called, called tool sets, which is for slightly more advanced users who want to build. Uh, dynamic, uh, WordPress sites. I won't, I won't ramble too much about that, but if that's something that sounds interesting, like, let's say the, one of the big use cases is like a real estate site, if you want to do directories, um, and listings and those kind of sites, it's a great plugin for that.

[00:54:16] Dean: Um, and then that, that you can check out a tool set dot. Um, like I said, with W P M L, we also have a few of, of, of the free plugins, one of them being the W Commerce, uh, multilingual and multicurrency. We have a few other glue plugins that come with the main plugin, um, which, which is worth noting. Um, and then we also have a forthcoming project, which is a little bit more for developers.

[00:54:41] Dean: But this is called ptc, which is a private translation cloud, um, which, uh, harness also harnesses automatic translation, but in the space of software translation. So if you've got an, an app, whether it be a mobile app or a desktop app, any form of application, you can actually translate your interface in, into, into multiple languages.

[00:55:03] Dean: So that. Extends the scope beyond just the, the web, the website realm, um, and into software in general. So that is hopefully coming, uh, coming out to the public towards the end of the year. At least that's the aim for now. Um, gotcha. But yeah, and that's, that's a whole nother topic, but that's something we're working on in the background.

[00:55:24] Josh: I'm curious. Well, I'll do a round two on that, cuz that's definitely a world that I don't, uh, venture into much. Yeah. So. Awesome Dean. Well man, this was fun. I learned a lot. I think everyone probably took some good takeaways from this one. Hopefully so. So, uh, we'll have a lot. We, we covered a lot of resources.

[00:55:39] Josh: We'll make sure we have. Some stuff linked at, uh, at josh hall.co where this podcast is at. So yeah, man, thanks for your time. I love what you guys up are up to. Everyone can check out wpml.org. Uh, so yeah, I mean, thanks for your time, man. Thanks for sharing some goods here today. Great. 

[00:55:54] Dean: Yeah, it's been my pleasure.

[00:55:55] Josh: Thank you very much. Awesome. Cheers man. 

[00:55:59] Josh: So there we go. Friends, I hope you learned as much as I did in this episode when it comes to best practices for multilingual websites. Again, highly recommend checking out, uh, Dean's companies plugin Wpml. You can go to josh hall.co/wpml to check that out. And overall, I just hope this episode gave you some good insight on the importance of multilingual services and tools and what's available for us now to make sure in.

[00:56:26] Josh: Our websites can be read and viewed by everyone, especially if you're working with a business that is global and has different eyes and different countries on it. So can't wait to hear your thoughts. If you would like to drop a comment and let me know a takeaway, I do read comments on all the podcast episodes in this case.

[00:56:42] Josh: Just go to josh hall.co/ 2 56. You can leave a comment on there. Uh, tons of resources that we went over that are gonna be linked over there at that link to Josh Hall co slash two 50. And again, if you'd like to check out the Wpml plugin, go to josh ho.co/wpml if you would. That's my affiliate link. That will drop you over there and cheers to making sure your websites are as multilingual as possible.

[00:57:08] Josh: Friends, I'll see you on the next episode.

Transcript source: Provided by creator in RSS feed: download file