This talk addresses a growing problem I see regularly: site owners using ChatGPT or Google Translate to translate content, then manually copy-pasting it into their WordPress sites. While this feels free or cheap, it’s actually expensive, error-prone, and produces inconsistent results.
I’ll cover five key problems with this approach:
- Time cost: Manual copy-paste workflows take hours; the „free“ translation is actually expensive when you factor in the time spent
- Broken content: LLMs can translate CSS classes, shortcode attributes, or HTML elements, breaking the front-end. I’ll show real examples of how this happens.
- Inconsistency: Different sessions, prompts, and tools create mixed styles and formality levels across the same site
- Lack of context: Generic AI doesn’t know your audience, brand voice, or terminology, resulting in translations that feel off
- Update nightmare: Finding where to paste updated translations, especially in languages you don’t speak, is nearly impossible to maintain
I’ll then demonstrate the right approach: using multilingual plugins that integrate AI translation properly – handling content parsing, preserving code elements, maintaining glossaries, and enabling easy updates. I’ll reference WPML (my company’s product) alongside TranslatePress and Weglot as established solutions.
This is educational content about workflow efficiency, not a product pitch. The core message applies regardless of which solution attendees choose.