TranslattePress is a plugin that I installed on my website in 2022. It allows me to translate the site into more than 15 different languages.
For the first six months, we thought the plugin was really great, and it is really good, but the longer the site ages with this plugin, the more catastrophic it becomes. I'll explain the downsides of TranslatePress and why I can't recommend it at this time.
Information :
I decided to write this article after sending dozens, maybe even hundreds, of emails to Translattepress support, some of which date back to last year.
My video in French :
For those who do not speak French, please use automatic translation and be careful before using the plugin!
The big problem with TranslattePress:
It translates everything, but when I say everything, I mean that if you write articles about games such as SUTOM, a game in French, the word of the day = PATATE, the plugin will translate it into 15 languages and therefore it will cost you a few euros. Of course, the articles will not be viewed in other languages, and if someone in another language wants to test the game, they will not be able to answer PATATE because they will see POTATO. (With more complex words
I calculated that I had to spend over €2,000 on translations for articles that were only useful in French. You might say that the plugin must surely have a button to disable translation when creating an article. Well, unfortunately NO, that's the change I asked them to make at the end of 2022, a button to disable translation for that particular article or page, but still nothing...
The only thing that has been available from the start is “Do not translate certain paths,” but this means that the site must have categories in the URLs, which is not recommended in SEO. This means that on an existing site, this change must be added and 301 redirects must be created, and all of the site's URLs will change.
It creates hundreds of thousands of 404s:
Now imagine you have lots of articles that have been translated and are useless. You do a little spring cleaning on your site and delete all the articles that were useful on June 10, 2022, for its daily games. You do your 301 redirect so that it doesn't fall into 404. Except that the 15 URLs that remain behind them fall into 404 because the plugin doesn't tell you if the original article = 301 or 410. So you have to copy the code. This means that every time you delete articles, you get 404s. During a spring clean, I currently have over 150,000 404 errors. I contacted support to find out what was going to be put in place, and the only thing that has been put in place is nothing.
The answer is to manually create 301 or 410 redirects for the translated URLs. But you should know that you will NOT find the translated URLs anywhere, which means that before deleting them, you will have to search for the translated URLs.
Change Google Translatte -> Deepl :
If you want to switch from Google Translatte to Deepl to improve your translations, your content will remain on Google Translatte, so you'll have to delete the entire translated database to be able to switch to Deepl translation.
I tried deleting the article and reposting it, but it didn't work. So if you change the translation mode, the new articles will have the translation you want.
In my opinion, the tool could be excellent, but in order for that to happen, the following should be implemented:
- Button to disable translation of the article or page
- List of translated URLs when editing the article
- Manage 404s (or at least set something up)
Updated 08/21/2024:
Support broke my ENTIRE website by deactivating the SEO plugin and told me by email that it was working fine (it fixes another bug on the site), except that for 16 hours, all the translated pages (currently over 70,000, remember) were returning 404 errors, and Google crawled a LOT of 404s!
To explain the issue, Translattepress creates 404 errors on custom slugs on the site. I was advised to disable the SEO plugin, I tested it and yes, it works, but I told them I didn't want to disable it because I had modified a lot of slugs.
So the person logs into my site and makes the change, telling me that everything looks fine. I'm not available, but I think the person has reinstalled the plugin. BUT NO, I log in 16 hours later and see lots of 404 errors. The SEO plugin changes the URL, but the translation of the URL is not done, so the translated site is broken because Google has the old URLs. The big problem with TranslatePress is that it doesn't care about URL history, so if a URL is a 404, it doesn't redirect to the new URL.
So thank you very much translatePress for once again causing trouble...
If you see anything else that's blocking you on TranslattePress, don't hesitate to let us know!
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