As most of you probably know, a few weeks back I tried out the Global Translator Plugin for WordPress. I decided not to use it for a few reasons, mainly because it messed up the layout of my site and produced too many validation errors.

Validation errors are errors in the HTML code of your site. To check for validation errors, you should head over to W3.org, where they have an easy tool you can run to check for these errors. Usually they show you small things that you can fix in the template of your site that you didn’t ever know about.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s ok! It’s not a big deal if your site has a few errors. Learn a little more about HTML, and then go back and fix them.

I have since purchased the Angusmans Translator Plugin Pro, and here is what I think:

Global Translator Plugin vs. Angusmans Translator Plugin Pro Version 4

The overwhelming difference between the two plugins is that the Global Translator Plugin created over 250 HTML validation errors, and the Angusman Translator Plugin created 0. This is the main reason that I’m willing to give the Angusman version a real try for a while. Another positive is that the Angusman version doesn’t throw off my layout at all.

Why I’m Not Sure If I Can Use Either

Both of the plugins rely on the Google and Babelfish translation engines, which are unpredictable. At the time I’m writing this article, neither engine is translating the site properly, although the Google translation engine does a good job most of the time. Right now I’m getting an error from Google that says it will correct itself.

I’ve had the Angusman plugin installed for a few days and today is the first day I’ve had this problem. I think that if my site got spidered by the Google search engine right now, it wouldn’t be able to find all the new pages, so there wouldn’t be any benefit at all.

What I’m Going To Do

I’ve going to give it a few weeks. Since the translated pages are clean and look nice, I’ll leave the plugin installed for a while. If I’m able to get the translated pages into the search engines, I’ll probably get a boost. If they don’t get in, I’ll turn the plugin off.

Translation plugins seems great in idea, but I’m not sure that there’s one out there that does the job. I’ll keep you all updated on how the Angusman one pays off in the next few weeks, until then I don’t feel like I have enough information to give a thumbs up or down.