I have a client who wanted his Joomla website to be available in multiple languages. There are basically two options for this type of request:
- Create one copy of the website for each language and have a professional translate each copy of the site.
- Use Google Translate for Joomla, also known as GTranslate
Both methods have advantages and disadvantages.
Use of professional translations: Creating copies of your website and having them professionally translated is the best way to get an accurate translation of your website. However, this is very expensive, especially if you want your site to be translated into multiple languages. Also, whenever you change or add content to your site, you should also update all of your translations. You can see how this would quickly get VERY expensive.
Using google translate: Google Translate is free and instant for up to 40 different languages. Unfortunately the translations are not very good. But they are close enough that the user can get the gist of what you are saying.
Unless you have a LOT of extra money, I highly recommend Google Translate. And if you have a Joomla website, I highly recommend the GTranslate module for Joomla. It is easy to install and manage.
Once installed, enabling or disabling a language is as simple as clicking on the language and saving the module. When a user selects a language, GTranslate launches a time frame that loads Google Translate. But once the page has loaded, the Google Translate framework disappears. Pretty slick.
Another downside: your translated site will not have search engine friendly URLs, it will not be indexed by Google, and it will display the IP address of the Google translator. If you don’t want to see the Google Translate framework as the page is translated and you want to have SEO URLs, you can buy the pro version of the GTranslate module for $ 80.
I highly recommend this great Google translation module for Joomla websites.