Utilizing Machine Translation for Website Translations in 150 Languages

Ronald: Welcome to Do the Woo. Today we are joined by Thomas Fanchin, the partnership manager for Weglot. Weglot is a translation plugin that helps businesses translate their websites into multiple languages. Thomas, thank you so much for joining us today. Maybe you can start by telling us a little bit about yourself and what your role is at Weglot.

Thomas: Yep, sure. My name is Thomas, partnership manager at Weglot. I work closely with CMS’, plugins, apps and all the tech partners that we have, and I also do a lot within the communities with whom we are interacting, and I’m based in Paris, France.

Ronald: I’ve known Weglot for so many years. It’s mainly because of the presence at the many WordCamps that you sponsor. Can you tell a little bit more about your community involvement and why you have such a heavy presence and maybe what the results of those are?

Thomas: Yeah. So basically, we launched during WordCamp Paris in 2016, and so we always had a good relationship with the WordPress community, gave us a lot of good feedback to help us bring the product to where it is today. And so we always stayed close to the WordPress community. We started to sponsor and support a couple of WordPress WordCamps and meetups too, and at some point, we were, I think, sponsoring maybe 30 to 60 WordCamps a year. And it was prior to COVID and we were like, “Okay, maybe it’s time to do something else,” so we started to think about becoming a WordPress global sponsor and then now we are WordPress global sponsor, which is great and help us to basically support everyone what is doing an event within WordPress. And now we are also more and more involved inside the Five for the Future movement.

Ronald: And how important is that to invest in the actual wordpress.org? So you mentioned Five for the Future, 30 to 60 WordCamps, which is enormous and it’s a huge cost. So is it the case that you feel that responsibility to invest back into WordPress because it gives you your access and it’s a big part of your business?

Thomas: For us, it’s what has always been working in the past. So we invest a lot in the community. We give back and we can see a lot of success for the company doing that, which is great because the more we are growing, the more the community is growing and when you match both together, it becomes this good and cool gift that you can share with everyone. And I think it’s just both of it click and it’s working out great, which is why the more we grow, the more we invest in the community.

Ronald: That’s an amazing thing, by the way. Just stop there. You saying that from a plugin company to actually put the community first and grow in a organic way and that gives you back versus the other way around where you participate in the hope that you’ll get a return on investment from that, and it’s the difference between giving and taking. I think it’s such a nice point from a WordPress… It’s important for the WordPress community, but it’s also nice to hear that from you. I want to just move on to WordCamps and the many folks that you speak to and we haven’t really dived into what Weglot actually does other than a translation plugin. So maybe we can start by busting some myths or some of the things, the most commonly asked questions that you get. So I’ll ask you a couple and you can give me a quick answer of whether it’s true or not. So does Weglot help with your SEO?

Thomas: Yes, it’s true. So we do all the SEO works once you install on your website. We basically add Azure. You have sub-directories on WordPress. We index your page. We translate your source code. We can even translate your alt images. Then if you want to edit all your metadatas, you can also do it, like a meta title and all this from Google.

Ronald: Okay. So if I were to want to push my site into a totally different country, let’s say Morocco, by translating every part of that, it will help support a higher ranking in the American search engine.

Thomas: Of course, you also need to do your work because all the different markets have different, I would say, keywords. You need to think about the wording. We need to think about all of that part because this is why you have content manager and SEO people that helps you building the local SEO that you want. And basically, if you do your work, we’ll do everything automatically. So you will have a subdirectory. Your whole website will be translated automatically. But it’s also up to you to know, “Okay, I’m targeting this specific country, this market, and these are the words what my competitors are using or this is the keywords that I want to have in my page,” and then you add all of this and then the magic happen and you are on the top of the pages. For some of our customers, it work out great pathways, so-

Ronald: Yeah. But I think that’s generally known when it comes to SEO. It’s not a magic toggle that you switch and then boom, number one. Although some business owners probably do ask that, “How do I get on top of Google?” But maybe that was a few years ago. What’s the maximum number of languages that Weglot can translate?

Thomas: Right now, we have more than 150 languages plus we are still adding more. So it depends on if a lot of users are, I don’t know, one language but it’s not on the languages that are available, we can add it.

Ronald: And translation, how does it work? How do you translate a page?

Thomas: Yeah. That’s a good question. So basically we detect all the content on the page. Then we send it to our Weglot translation API and we send back to your website. So it’s like search and display basically.

Ronald: Okay. And the technology, and I can just imagine that people ask, “Is it artificial intelligence? Is it machine learning?” How does it work in the backend?

Thomas: It’s machine translation. So we use different machine translation providers. We use them to generate the translation.

Ronald: And is that the magic source that Weglot provides? It’s the combination of different translation models.

Thomas: Yeah. So with the language first, we have one machine translation. So let’s say you pick English and French. I don’t know if that’s the case, but we will use DeepL, for example, for English and French because it’s really good. We have a lot of good feedback when we use DeepL and people love it. And so let’s say we’ll use that and plus, you can, of course, edit all the translation. So once you have that part, once you have machine translation, you can then edit it from Weglot. And that’s also why it’s magic between machine translation and also manual translation. So you can manually edit all the translation. So that’s what the magic happens.

Ronald: That’s interesting. So there is a manual process, but actually that helps to humanize it and make it natural.

Thomas: That’s the part two. The part one is we detect everything. We translate it and then I would say part two, you can go on your dashboard, edit it if you don’t like something or if you want to add glossary word you want to change, add specific rules to your translation. And you can even change the machine tone. So let’s say machine translation, you have different type of tones and you can change it and choose what you want for the website, which is cool too.

Ronald: Yeah, I can imagine in, for example, German, when you have a formalized and an informal version of German. Can you teach it? So, for example, certain words to not translate because let’s say you sell cups, but actually you don’t want to translate the word cup because it’s part of the product title.

Thomas: Yeah, sure. You have glossary rules and you can basically say, “Never translate cups by cup or just never translate cups or your brand name or whatever that you want.” You can also say, “Always translate,”

Ronald: So I know there are a number of other competitors in the market who translate your website. What’s the difference? How do you differentiate yourself to other WordPress plugins?

Thomas: That’s a super interesting question. Obviously, all of those plugins, they applies to a different use case, so it will depend on what the user is looking for. With Weglot, I think the big element of differentiation is that it’s really easy to use. So you plug it and then you choose your original language, your destination language, and then it’s basically done. You have the language you [inaudible 00:10:20] on the website and you can just switch between English, French and whatever. I always think English and French because obviously, I’m from France and I speak French, so sorry about that.

Ronald: I think that you should never excuse yourself for speaking another language.

Thomas: Let’s say English and Spanish this time. And so when you have all your content in Spanish and we also do all the SEO part automatically. So once you do that, you basically just use original destination and then it’s basically done with the manual processors, except if you want to change it. As I said, now you have to go to a transition dashboard and change it, which is outside of WordPress too. So yes, and that’s also a big element of differentiation because everything is stored outside of WordPress and not in WordPress and in audio translation. And you can actually edit everything outside of WordPress from the Weglot dashboard.

Ronald: Okay. Which is great if you have a translation consultant or somebody that helps you with that. You can separate that and they don’t have to log into all your confidential dashboard to change something. How does it work with compatibility of themes? So I know we’re changing more towards the blog editor, but the majority still isn’t using full set editing, so different themes use different types of menus and labels. So let’s just focus on the top menu and the translation of these items. Do users run into issues with that? Is there something that isn’t compatible?

Thomas: Not really. With Weglot, way that works, it automatically detect all the content on the website, which is menu or whatever you have on the website will be detected and translated. So we don’t have compatibility issues with themes or even plugin, which is also great because let’s say you want to update your theme or you have update a plugin and nothing will break, and-

Ronald: That’s a really good point actually. I know it’s something so simple, but that’s quite often why people stop changing because they’re locked into a theme or a page builder and then you think, “Oh, wouldn’t it be lovely to change something?” And then you realize the whole stack of technology that’s dependent on that, and then you think… This is my last question on the actual things that people might ask you. When it comes to slowing down, if you have a site that has different versions, different translated versions, will it slow down because it needs to pull in all the different resources?

Thomas: As all the content is not on your website, so all the translation are stored outside, that’s already a good for your website because you don’t have to stop these additional resources on your WordPress website, which is great. Plus, when we run into a Google PageSpeed, usually, Weglot is the last thing that slow downs your website.

Ronald: Can it be cached in something like Cloudflare?

Thomas: I’m not positive about it, but if you are experiencing any cache issue, I know that usually the support team recommend WPRocket to serve it because sometimes some of the users are use to the experience with it.

Ronald: That’s a great recommendation, and actually, it leads me to the next question of how important partnerships are. And I know you mentioned a couple of plugins, but just in general terms, making things compatible from a developer’s point of view, but actually if you then think of business owners and managers who make the decision to go for Weglot or not, building that ecosystem around your brand, how important that is?

Thomas: That’s super important. That’s also part of what I do each day, and for us, partnering with tools and plugins, themes and all the apps, from a technical point of view, it’s a major key because obviously if there is anything at some point that has an issue or there is a compatibility issue, then you have direct access to communication and you can just exchange about it and solve it really quickly. For the users, it’s also really, really important because at the end, you want your product to be fully compatible with your partners and you want your users to be able to have a seamless integration or you want them, when they walk to a path of your partners or plugin themes or whatever, like a CMS, you want them to be able to basically have a seamless use experience, which is for them to make the job really easy for them.

And even from a partner standpoint, it’s great to just exchange visibility, see what we can do together to grow. I mentioned growing in the beginning, but it’s also the same with partners because you want them to grow with you and the more you grow, the more you make your partners grow. And again, it’s part of the ecosystem and it’s part of what is working out great. And we always think for the long term too.

Ronald: Yeah. Can you give an example, because what I hear is initially, you were quite reactive to your partnership, so looking at compatibility and having open lines of communication so you can react to solving issues, but now you’re talking more about building something extra additional. And that’s actually really exciting because now you build something that the user might want to use that’s maybe not existing or a compatibility thing, so do you have an example of a partnership where you’re actively working on that?

Thomas: We have a couple of great partners with whom we are working inside of WordPress but also outside of WordPress because obviously in multiple CMS. It has been working out great for both, and as I said, we always aim for the long term and for the long run, which is great because we want to grow and we want to grow with our partners, but also with the ecosystem. And the more we do it, the better it is for everyone and we try to bring all the ecosystem along with us, which is like the company philosophy.

Ronald: I’ve seen you published a PDF recently or maybe a while ago, and one of the partners in there was Klaviyo, for example. So do you collaborate with them on a strategy? Klaviyo is a known marketing email platform and does Weglot provide services to them and you can sort of integrate it into your WordPress website?

Thomas: So basically with Klaviyo, we have technology part of it, which is we have a great integration with them and we have great communication too with our team, which also led to us doing marketing together and collaborating on events, but also on partner guides like what you have seen. And yes, we do have some sort of integration with it. The way that the project works, generally the integration part is super easy because it’s almost all of the time compatible, and then sometimes some of the products have specific ways which are entitled to the product itself. They are the only one doing it that way. Then you need to figure out how to solve, not those issues, but to find a workaround to make sure that it works with their way of pushing that technology, and once you have that, then you are good to go.

Ronald: Yeah. And it’s really interesting because you’re solving an issue, but you’re also presenting a stack for a business or for a builder. So if we go with, for example, a WooCommerce store owner who might have an agency that’s advising them and you have builders that eventually build something and you have all these different roles, all these different users that somehow have to connect with Weglot and other apps and presenting that full scale stack of what’s compatible, by the sounds of it, it’s super important because once you go with one technology, you want to make sure that further down the road, that all the other apps and all the other SaaS and CMS will remain compatible with it. Obviously, Weglot only extends to so much that’s front end facing, but I can imagine it’s a tactic that you and also Klaviyo and other businesses start to use a lot more, that partnership and showcasing. So can you share a little bit more on how you market these integrations to your customers? How do you announce that? How do you share that and what sort of language and who do you speak to, your audience?

Thomas: We have different ways of sharing all the things that we do and all the partnerships with our community and with everyone really, even people outside of the community, because it’s interesting for your users but also for people out there in the world that are searching for a specific integration or who are searching for your product. It pass through a lot of content writing and a lot of articles, newsletters, social media to make sure that everything is visible and you can have a look at it. But what is also important and that a lot of people tend to forget about is that it’s also super important to make all of these partnerships, integration and everything that you do visible within your team internally, which is also something that I’m working on and that we have been doing in the past, as most of the time, they are the one that are in the front lines, like your sales team, your support team, even the marketing team to push these integration, these partnerships and everything that you do with your partners.

Ronald: Because they are the voice of your brand and they speak to the customers, they need to be able to answer those questions very quickly. Fascinating. So we talked a little bit about marketing. We talked about how you tackle the partnerships approach of Weglot. I know it’s a big theme in the last 12 months, which is AI, and where does AI fit in with Weglot? Is that a much discussed topic?

Thomas: Mm-hmm. I did have a lot of questions in the past. Right now, I think it’s slowly having less and less questions, but when ChatGPT was rising, I had a ton of questions about it during events, and so I would say, again, it depends on what you’re looking for. If you look at Weglot, it’s a tool that helps you automatizing all the translation process for you, so you really have nothing to do. You plug it and then it’s done. If you start to use ChatGPT… I’m just using a ChatGPT example. You could take something else. I’m not in a partnership or anything with them. But anyway, if you choose to use it, you can have access because I’ve tried it myself, just to try it, to do some translation and so on. You could have your translation and then maybe create a stack, I don’t know, to translate your website and it can be integrated somewhere in your current technology.

Ronald: So you’re saying it fits right in. It can be part of the process of the tool?

Thomas: Yeah. It could be part of the process of what you’re doing, but again, it depend on your use case and there is different users, different use case, and to each of them, there is something specific that works for them to what they are demanding.

Ronald: I think that’s a fair answer because it’s what you said earlier. There was this hype a few months ago where everybody panicked around AI and you certainly have your grandparents asking you, “Oh, what about the jobs of today?” And now people realize, “Actually, it’s a tool. It’s very useful and you can super power a few things, but actually it’s not replacing the whole world.” You talked a little bit earlier about your sales team and internal team to announce these integrations. How do you position your WordPress agencies in advising their customers to think about translation? And I think it’s two sides of these questions. Do you have something that you equip the agencies with so they can have these conversations? And I think also the part of that answer is, “When is the right time to have these conversations with your clients?”

Thomas: So we do have an agency partnership manager, Thibaud. I mentioned tech partnership, but there are also resellers and there are also agencies which are three of, I would say, the type of partners that we have. So we have our agency partnership manager, and he makes sure that you have all the resources that you need to be able to onboard all your customers that go through. Again, one thing that is super important, which is content. So make sure that you have the proper resources, a proper help center for agencies, proper deck of presentation. And I would say the staff at least to make sure that each other agency has a relationship with us and have, let’s say, one-on-one support and all of this. So I would say it’s all of these things that make an agency choose Weglot and sell it at some point to their customer.

Ronald: Yeah. And if I’m an agency, so now I know that there is a agency partnership manager or agency I can contact. They can support me. There’s sales enablement, material blueprint. Great.

Thomas: Exactly.

Ronald: Yeah. So now I know that. When is the right time to have this conversation with a business? So the first thing, a business comes along. It’s like, “Right, I want to turn this ecommerce into WooCommerce. Maybe it’s a startup. Maybe it’s an established business. When would you advise for agencies to have… Is it right from the beginning when they start building or is it something that maybe once they realize that there is an international customer base, and then to start thinking about these things?

Thomas: Again, depends on the user because some of them already have the international part integrated in their strategy and it’s something that they want to build from the beginning. So when they will send the offer to the agencies, there will be somewhere, “Translation to English, French,” or, “We are targeting this specific market and we want to launch this website for this,” and then you need to integrate a tool. And you also have some of the customers that are already well-established, already have a website, but maybe want to change something. And now they are thinking about targeting another country because they look at Google Analytics and they have seen that there is a lot of users coming from Spain or France or the US and now they want to translate it to a new language, which is also a second use case. And there is a lot more, but top of mind right now, I’m thinking about-

Ronald: Yeah, and I guess it comes back to those questions we asked earlier about SEO, number of languages, which is the right tool, which is compatible with your themes and builders and so on. And thinking about it early as an agency, maybe plant the seed with the business owner because once you see the traffic pickup from different countries. And let’s not forget there are many businesses that operate in their home market where the country is bilingual or multilingual. So I guess, for a lot of them, it’s right from the beginning where they have to think about a multilingual side. It’s huge, isn’t it? A lot of companies think of their own home language, but actually, once you start trading across borders, especially in Europe, multilingual is so important. Do you have an advice on a multicurrency that works well with Weglot or again, all compatible?

Thomas: We should be all compatible. If at some point there is an issue, then you could for sure reach out to our support team and I will have a look at it and make sure that it works. I don’t have something specific to recommend.

Ronald: I guess that’s the best answer, isn’t it? That’s quite reassuring because knowing that you actually will react to any issues that are out there, it’s a comforting thing to know that whoever you invest in, in the future in 10 years time… Maybe that’s too far. In three, five years time, it remains compatible even if something arises.

Thomas: Yeah, that’s the cool part. So it’s just if there is any currency converter, I guess partners out here want to reach out to us. If you listen to it, feel free to reach out and let’s build a partnership together.

Ronald: That’s fantastic. So I’m slowly getting really a good picture of what Weglot does, how you position yourself in the market with partnerships, but also the ecosystem, the community, and how important it is to constantly have these conversations and be open to feedback, open to improvements. Is there anything else that I’m missing out here, because you seem to have cornered yourself in a really good position right at the center?

Thomas: No, I think the quick, not presentation, but the quick topics that you mentioned, I’m sure that we can dive more into each of them because there’s tons of things to discuss. But I think you’re right. We are all about community, the ecosystem, building strong partnerships, long-term partnerships. It’s what we love to do, and our product too, making sure the product is right, that the users are happy about it, and we have a strong team of people who really love the product beyond it, good users’ feedback, which help us grow, grow, grow and more. And I think that’s the good… I would say, if you can say, the good sauce, but the good recipes to have a good project at the end and to make things work out.

Ronald: It’s almost like a blueprint for any plugin company, isn’t it? Anybody who’s in the WordPress or WooCommerce ecosystem, just follow what Weglot does with all these. Do this, do that, do that, and it all turns out fine and you’ll be sustainable. Great.

Thomas: Brilliant.

Ronald: That’s really nice. Thank you so much, Thomas, for sharing your view on working at Weglot and around partnerships. Really appreciate your time. Thank you.

Thomas: Thanks. All right. Cheers.