Maybe you can try Polylang…
Other free plugins are qtranslate and xili language. But I prefer the one I wrote of course…
An other solution is to not use a plugin but a multisite WordPress installation : you have a blog by language.
Pros :
– Plugin/Theme independants
– You can do easily a complete localization
– Search Engine optimization
Cons :
– Two blogs to manage (but just one installation to maintain with multisite network feature).
I’ve made this decision for my blog
I did not mention this solution since jush was looking for a plugin. I agree with you for the first advantage. This is the biggest advantage of using multisite for multiple languages.
For the 2 others, I believe that a good plugin should be as good (if not better) as multisite. For example, Polylang informs search engine about the translations adding lines <link hreflang=... in the html head.
In my opinion, the biggest disadvantage of the multisite is that it is difficult to maintain links between translations, whereas a plugin would do this automatically.
I don’t know Polylang, Few years ago I’ve tested qtranslate, and there is some case where a plugin is not compatible with this type of plugin and you have one element in your blog which is not well translated.
For Multisite solution, now link between translations is very easy with the plugin Multisite Language Switcher (thanks to lloc). And I’ve made a special theme to redirect users from root to dedicated language.
You can test it on oncleben31.cc
To conclude, Plugin Vs Multisite is a question of blogger needs. The last one is not well known but WordPress users should study the solution to make the best choice.
