How to Translate Your WordPress Site for Free with Polylang in 2024: Complete Guide

Before we start, you need to understand something: a site that isn't translated means visitors you're not reaching, and ultimately, money you're leaving on the table. So unless you've already got plenty of that (and if so, fair play to you!), pay close attention to what comes next.

Having tested a fair few solutions, here's what's out there:

WPML

Weglot

TranslatePress

The thing is, they're all very good but often ridiculously expensive. And their free versions? Basically, you can translate two sentences and a comma before they ask you to pay up. That's why Polylang is genuinely the plugin that gets the job done for free.

1. Installing the Plugin

Dead simple:

Go to your WordPress dashboard

Plugins > Add New

Search for "Polylang"

Install and activate the first plugin that appears

2. Initial Configuration

Here's how to do it, step by step:

Choose your languages (make sure you pick the right variant, e.g. English UK or US)

Set your default language

Enable media translation (super important for SEO)

Configure your URLs (personally, I recommend the short format like mysite.co.uk/fr/)

For Posts and Pages

In practice, here's how it works:

Go to "Posts" or "Pages"

Click the "+" next to the language you want

Copy the HTML code

Drop it into ChatGPT for translation (even the free 3.5 version does the job)

Paste the translated content

Don't forget meta descriptions and URLs

The brilliant thing is that it preserves all your formatting!

If you've got an online shop, make sure you enable:

Product translation

Category translation

Attribute translation

Shipping class translation

At the time of writing, here are the mistakes I see most often:

Skipping crucial pages (homepage, T&Cs, privacy policy)

Forgetting to create menus per language

Neglecting the footer

Leaving the basket untranslated

Here's the thing that makes all the difference: by default, the free version of Polylang has an issue with WooCommerce — the basket and checkout pages stay in the default language. That's just not on!

But don't worry, I've got the fix! I've prepared a PHP snippet that sorts this problem right out. To get it:

Click here: https://www.traffic-theory.com/toncodephp

Copy the code

Paste it into your WordPress site

And that's it — your basket and checkout will be perfectly translated

Having tested it myself, it works like a charm. No more translation issues on the pages that matter most for your e-commerce!