Multilingual Site
A multilingual site serves the same content in more than one language, with a way for visitors and search engines to find the right version.
In plain English
Every page exists more than once, one per language, linked together so the site knows they are translations of each other rather than separate pages.
In WordPress that is a plugin: WPML and Polylang translate inside your own site, while Weglot translates through a service and serves the results.
Why it matters
For a business with customers either side of a border it is the difference between being findable and not. People search in their own language.
It is also easy to do badly. A site with half of its pages translated, or with a menu in one language and content in another, reads as unfinished.
How it works
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You choose the languagesOne is the default, the rest are translations of it.
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Each page gets a translated twinIts own URL, usually with a language prefix or a separate domain.
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Hreflang tells search enginesWhich version is for which language, so the right one is shown.
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A switcher lets people chooseIn the header, or automatically from the browser’s language.
Machine translation needs a human pass
Automatic translation gets you ninety percent of the way and then says something strange in the headline. Have a speaker read the pages that matter.