Why WordPress Is a Translation Hero

By Sarah-Claire Jordan

If you have ever read a blog or considered creating one of your own between 2003 and now, you have probably run across more than a few blogs published thanks to WordPress. Though other blogging tools, like LiveJournal, have been around longer, WordPress is by far the best at what it does. LiveJournal, for example, is a social networking service that focuses on blogging. This is great if you are looking to meet people and have a blog as well, but it isn’t the best tool for getting digital content published on the Internet in an organized and clean way.

This is where WordPress comes swooping in, bringing the gift of a content management system, or CMS, that means anyone can create a blog or website for themselves and have the digital content that they can then share with the world is presented in a clear and structured manner. On top of that, everything that makes up WordPress was created using an open-source project, meaning community members can help to create new code or plug-ins for the very system that helped them launch their own blogs.

WordPress has also made waves for being extremely language-friendly. So far, users can create websites and blogs in more than 70 different languages, with that number steadily increasing thanks to the open-source nature of the CMS. Content has also been localized in over 160 different areas, because you can’t reach a group of people by simply translating content into the standard dialect of their language. Besides that, every language that WordPress can be used in has all the same features as the original U.S. English version.

Just in case that didn’t seem translation-friendly enough for you, WordPress hosted a “Global Translation Day” on April 24 to boost the number of languages WordPress can be translated into and increase the number of translators working on current and future projects. The main goals of this event were to show people how to get involved in translation projects for WordPress, finish up as many pending translation projects as possible, and recruit more translation editors.

The 24-hour event started in the East and moved on according to time zone to reach the West. Live translation training was available for different languages in 30-minute or hour-long segments, moving from one time zone to the next and covering as many languages as possible discussing how to translate WordPress and everything that needed to be known about a particular language. The translation tool, local glossary, and local style guides were explained in detail, with examples of common mistakes. Local translators were also encouraged to meet in small groups and translate face-to-face to help with the big translation push.

This is a huge step towards helping everyone in every community with Internet access to be able to create their own digital content in their native language. Being able to do so could create all kinds of business and creative opportunities for people who weren’t previously able to easily create their own blogs and websites to share content with. WordPress is doing great work at breaking down linguistic barriers.

For an overview of Alpha Omega Translations’ expertise, visit our website translation and localization page.