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For long-form interviews, news, and commentary about the WordPress ecosystem. This is the companion show to The WP Minute, your favorite 5-minutes of WordPress news every week.
Eric Karkovack (00:00)
Hi everyone, and welcome to the WP Minute. I'm Eric Karkovack. So, AI is helping us take on many previously difficult tasks these days. Creating a multilingual WordPress site is a prime example. Doing it right has historically required a lot of human and technical resources. But today's guest has a product poised to remove many of those barriers, along with some common quirks that AI generated translations usually suffer from.
Augustin is the CEO and founder of Weglot a pillar sponsor of the WP Minute. He's here to show us how Weglot can help us manage and create a multilingual site with AI's help. Augustin, welcome to the WP Minute. Pleasure to have you here.
Augustin (00:42)
Thank you very much, Eric. I'm very happy to be here. Hi everyone. it's an honor to to be in your in your show.
Eric Karkovack (00:50)
Well thank you. I I want to start because looking at some of the challenges that we normally face with with translations, it's certainly automated translations, because if you've ever done a multilingual site and you depended on an automated translation translation, the obstacle seems to be that you know these tools do not get the context of what your primary language content is.
So if that's English, if that's French, the other versions are kind of generic translations and not really speaking for your brand in the same way. how is Weglot approaching that challenge with this new version that you've got?
Augustin (01:28)
thanks for the question. indeed, it's a big challenge we wanted to solve and the reason we wanted to solve this challenge is to bring more value to our users and customers.
The question we try to answer is how can we deliver very high translations quality combined with superpower control to make sure you it to make sure your translations will stay true to your brand or to your corporate ton of voice.
Not easy. But lately with the with the recent AI technologies improvements, I mean it's it's been more and more easy to get at least translations have no grammatical errors. I mean it's it's nicely it's it's rightly
written so it's more about now how do we make it feel it's human, it's your brand, it's it's your identity.
So the way we approach the this challenge is to generate personalized AI translation model for each of our users. So it's built with their own specificities, which would c which could be their industry, their audience, the tone of voice they use on their origin language, their glossary, their existing translations, custom instructions, etc. I mean
Just think about it. If you're talking to TikTok users, you will not use the same brand tone of voice than if you're talking you have a website about tax administration policies. So it's really about that.
That's the way we wanted to take over this challenge. And I would say that now quality is a value proposition we try to commit to deliver to the users. But it can be hard to process, to assess. it's hard to assess because either you don't speak the language, so for example, I don't speak Japanese. I can't say if it's a good Japanese translation or if it's not a good one.
Or it's also hard to assess because it's subjective. we all have our history and the way we we understand and we and we use our own language, so it's subjective by nature.
And because of that, what we wanted to do so on top of having an personalised AI translation model, we want to also have a kind of a way to have an assessment system where you can have some sort of scoring with criteria that can be more objective to help you assess if you have high quality translations or not. And it can be, for example, consistency, so you have the same
tone of voice, the same way of saying things all all across your websites. It can be also is it optimized for the search engines or LLMs? Or and it can be also does it follow the instructions you gave? So
At the end the day, with these two things, personalized and kind of a way to assess and to control if you have a good quality, the goal for us is to generate trust. And I think it's really about that with LLMs now. It's are you able to trust them to do something? And that's what we want to do. And we want to have the Weglot brand sound like high quality translations are guaranteed.
Eric Karkovack (04:35)
Yeah, that that's one of the I mean, I've run a few multilingual sites and I I
Sadly, I speak a tiny bit of Spanish and I'm not very good at it. So, you know, I've used the automated translation tools, and it's sad because I can't tell the quality. you know, and unless you have that human resource with you, it's going to be difficult. So how did you you know approach this with the new A AI translation model that you have? you know, how does it work and how how does that imp work? How does that actually behind the scenes improve the experience?
for developers and site owners who need that multilingual translation, but don't necessarily have someone who speaks that language on their within their organization.
Augustin (05:16)
Yeah, I agree and that's that's the whole challenge and so for nearly a decade what we wanted to do is to offer tools, editing tools, so you can do your own translations, quality review, workflow, etc.
And now with the new capabilities, we wanted to take quality on us and make sure you can have high quality translations, whether you are you can speak natively Spanish and English, or you don't. And so for that I think it's really about so the first thing, the core of our value propositions for quality is the translation model. And
Can think about it as three steps. One would be creation, so it has to be easy and fastly created. So it's it's created in minutes for each user using their website as a starting base. That's the beauty of a website, it has a lot of context, it helps to give many information that we can
Pass to LLMs and we can format in a way that it can create a first base of your translation model that is very enriched and enough to have a a better context and better translations. So then on top of that we can suggest instructions. So for example, do not translate my brand name or
translate acronym or or other things and then it can be you can also add after that glossary rules existing translations if you have anything that's the creation
And then after creation, it's more about so it will generate translations and then based on that there is a review. So either you can use kind of a classic way which is I'm gonna review it myself if I know the language, or I can involve people knowing the language, it can be teammates, it can be
I don't know, freelancers you wanna you you you wanna hire for that, etcetera. And that's fine and it's possible. Or you can also use built in capabilities that we are adding currently, which are gonna review translations, give the score and help you understand where you can improve them and when you need to improve them.
And what you need to do to do that. But so it's a review phase. And this review phase is kind of an ongoing process.
And the last step is improve. So create, review, improve. And improve, improvements is also a continuously don't know how to say that in English, but it's a continuum of task where it can be it can it takes everything that's been reviewed and it integrates it to make your model better. So for example, if it's if you have someone who
view translations and do some post editing, it will be taken into account so it will feed the next generation of of of translations. And same thing if it's done with the agent that we are offering. And yeah, that's a loop that's core of our translation quality capabilities. That's the way we approach that.
Eric Karkovack (08:14)
So i is this a particular AI model that you're using or can user expect to connect with Claude or Chat GPT or whatever they're hap happen to use?
Augustin (08:26)
for now the existing version of the new product, so it's called we load two point Sorry, we're not very good at marketing. we're very good, but it's simple. the marketing
Eric Karkovack (08:36)
You're doing great.
Augustin (08:39)
team will not like it, but they're very good at it. And we like the the the two point and so for now we're using Gemini, but
It's not we we're not w the goal is not to be only connected with one LLM, it's to be connected with the one that's providing the best first layer of quality translations and also to give at some point the capability to users if they want to switch from one provider to another. So
Eric Karkovack (09:08)
Okay, yes,
that makes sense. Because I I I've seen that before with multilingual plugins, that you have a choice of which model you may may think. And even with WordPress itself now, since WordPress 7.0, you have a the connector screen with different models that you can connect to. But it makes sense to start with one that you know is going to work and then you know move on from there.
Augustin (09:31)
Yeah. And I think if if our responsibility is to deliver quality, you don't really care what models are used behind the scene. What you wanna make sure is that it it delivers high quality translations and it generates the impact you're expecting.
Eric Karkovack (09:47)
Sure. Yeah. I I d so one of the things that I think people d getting into this don't realize is how much more this is than just text content that we translate. media is also has to be a concern. for example
If I have a a site in three different languages, how does that impact the alt text on my images? how does Weglot approach that and what you know what can Weglot 2.0 do to work with media files more closely?
Augustin (10:16)
yeah, you're right. I think it's important to have a full experience that's not only translating and localizing texts, it's also important to
cover every aspect of the of the website. And for media, so you you you you named alt tags for example. actually is something we already do with the the the previous version of of Weglot so what's important
Eric Karkovack (10:43)
Okay.
Augustin (10:44)
is to be able to detect all the information, the content that's in the code and that's used and parsed by a search engine.
And and LLMs to understand what types of media are displayed and what's the topic or the or the purpose of the media. So it's already something that we that you can do with Weglot with the with the previous version of Weglot So we still do that. it's important
Eric Karkovack (11:09)
Okay.
Augustin (11:10)
to do that. But the new things we do
Is that we're able to translate to localize images and at some point videos. So for example, if you have images with text and you want to be able to display the same image in different languages, now it's possible to do it directly inside your Weglot account. So it will help you to detect the image you want to translate, just translate it, and it will host and display it in the different languages.
We want to do that also with the with the with the video. So it's really easy and you have everything in the same place for for users and you don't need to either don't do it or to go from one tool to another or or build complex workflow to be able to have a full localized experience at the end.
Eric Karkovack (12:02)
Yeah, the media
aspect of it, I mean, would seem very important f especially for, you know, you have that international audience, you don't want to to serve them images in languages they don't speak. So that's important. I I know that site management has also been it looks like a priority with Weglot 2.0 when you have a lot of content, a lot of translated content, and it can be hard to manage and and and find the things that you're looking for, I I
I understand you you did some redesign work with your dashboard. How how how is that coming along and how how is that going to help users?
Augustin (12:33)
yeah, I mean I think what we did is is to to keep what
seem to be very useful and very used by the existing users and then challenge other other aspects or other features of the dashboard and and in and even the more than that also the types of of personas that will use the dashboard now and also the the expectations. users users expectations
Have changed a lot, I think, with LLMs. From my perspective, users now are more receptive to products that can offer a user experience where you can have one of these modes, I don't know if you can say that in in English, but one of this approach. So one could be set and forget.
You just want like a super autonomous product that is doing the job for you and sharing updates about the results and that's it. You don't want you you don't want to do more. the second thing is control and monitoring. and that's where you can maybe play with the level of autonomy you want to give to the tool and the product and or the the intensity of the human in the loop that you want to have. And
They are products that can be set and forget and or control and monitor.
And lastly, they also want product that you can use with LLMs with MCPs. so so earlier you you talked about how you can connect WordPress seven with with with your LLMs. That's exactly that. And people want to want to have the option to use your product or with their LLMs or to have their LLMs use your product and they also forget about it. And
And so we try to I mean we we we we did more than trying, so we actually built dashboard that's capable of of of to offer these different types of approaches. And and I think because translations is very subjective, as we as we talked about earlier, and it's it's really about trust at some point, I think. we've revisited the backend to
let users pick the workflow that suits them. So they we have users that don't want to review anything, so they have the option to have like zero actions for for them, just set and forget. But we also have users where they need to have a a a clear stage process from review to validation to production and that's something that's really easier to set up.
now with the new dashboard and when it's not ready it's flexible enough that it will be it will be possible in a couple of weeks or months.
Eric Karkovack (15:09)
So yeah, if you if you don't want to ever touch the dashboard, you don't have to. And if you are very detail oriented and want to have a a clear workflow, Weglot 2.0 is going to let you do that as well. That's that's great to to provide options for both sets of users, because that's a that's a difficult challenge, I think.
Augustin (15:27)
Yeah. You you you don't want to serve every every user experience because at some point you will be mediocre at every at everything.
Eric Karkovack (15:35)
Yeah, yeah.
Augustin (15:37)
but maybe we can be good at helping users to define the level of autonomy they want to give to the to the to the tool. And that's that's that's the part that I think we're investing
I mean we're building it. We're currently building that. So it needs to we need to have a proper accessing scoring system and a proper reviewing agent or system that's doing it. And and while 2.0 is ready and in production, it's not something that's that's that's
crystallized or frozen. It's an ongoing and and the project for the next year. So we will build new things every week and and month so we can increase the capabilities, notably for the for the workflows.
Eric Karkovack (16:20)
Well that's great to hear. I and and one more
kind of hidden part of having a multilingual website is SEO and GEO and and the AI search that everybody's talking about these days. Because when you have like, for example, a a primarily English site, that's what you're s you're you're typically that's what you're optimized for, right? But there are search engines that look you know, they're international. They they they they search French, they search Spanish and Japanese. How how is Weglot
attacking that problem like how how do you ensure that the translated content is also properly optimized for search engines and LLMs to to index
Augustin (17:00)
Yeah, thanks for asking the the question.
I it's it's something we always had had and we always had in mind and one of the reasons is that at the very beginning, when we started Weglot ten years ago with Remy, I remember we had a JavaScript snippet integration and we were going to people to have them install and test the product and they were all saying, Okay, it's fine, but it's full dynam dynamic, search engines bot will not see it so
It will not help my SEO. And that's one of the reasons that pushed us to look for different ways to add Weglot to websites. And that's also one of the reasons that pushed us to the WordPress ecosystem and community, where we were able to build a WordPress web plugin that were that was server-side.
And so being server-side means that the content is readable, indexable by bots and that we can increase your SEO. And so from this day, we really try to do everything we can to be great at the technical part for SEO. And that's that's something we're proud of, in that when you you add Weglot to a website, technically speaking, so SEO geo
they they share a lot of share a lot a lot of constraints and and and mechanism and one of them is you need to have content that's readable, discoverable by the bots and they they have
strong similarities. And so from from that day we really tried to be very good at it. And so technically speaking, it's already there. So it means that our multilingual infrastructure helps you to be of obviously it's server-side by nature.
You have everything in your in your in your source code. You have dedicated URLs, so it means that if you have a French version of your website, it can be under slash FR or under a subdomain or under a different top level domain.
All tags including alt tags for media, but of course including SEO tags, geo tags are detected and translated, and so on and so on. So purely on the technical part of the SEO geo, that's something we are very I think we we're very good at. And now it's more about okay, so now that you have this healthy technical aspect, how
How can you improve or how can you have more impact in SEO GEO? So the first part is to have a diagnostic, an analysis of your performance where you are. So that's the first layer we are building and we are releasing in the coming weeks, which is what's your SEO, what's your GEO performance right now in French, Spanish compared to English, for example.
It gives an idea of your margin of of improvements, etc. And then step two, once we have a solid base on this on this part, this is the actions you can do to improve it. Some of it can be automated by us, some of it can't be automated, but we can help you to do it to do it. So this is really how we see this SEO GEO and we think it's still important.
Because so when GEO arrived, we didn't know how it was how it's working. We're still not super clear about everything and every criteria, but we tried to run some analysis on our end just to understand and and to share our our results. And for example we did a study on millions of of prompts and questions, simulating qu simulating research or questions you would do to LLMs or to Google
Google AI overview and we found out that with Google AI overview if you had translated version of your website you had three X more 3x more times results appearing in their research results.
This is one analysis. I think it's it it needs to be taken with carefully. and we will run it we will run similar analysis every quarter or every semester. But it's interesting to see that it's still important for LLMs or or or equivalent to have translated versions of your website.
Eric Karkovack (21:08)
Yeah, that's I mean if you are trying to reach the international audience, it just makes sense that you would have, you know, optimized content in the languages that folks are speaking. that that kind of leads me to the last question I have for you. And it's more of a general question, but just let's just say that someone today decided I need a multilingual website.
What advice would you give them for s starting out and and, you know, having success in this area? Should they, for example, if they know they need three or four different languages, should they start with one or they should they go, you know, all at once? What what would you say for for someone just starting out? I know that's a big question, but
Augustin (21:48)
yeah, it's a big question and I think there are many contexts and many differences depending on your business, etc. But we can try to to to frame an answer.
Eric Karkovack (22:01)
Even if you
find a c a a common mistake people make, I think even that's helpful.
Augustin (22:05)
Yeah, I I think first of all, it's one of the most accessible growth tests you can run, actually. And I think it's under estimated today. it's it's it's I mean it's it's mechanical. It it increases your total adult basel market, it increases your reach. I mean that's and and it's not really costly. I mean I mean today you have tools and products, obviously our but but you can also do
Do it with others. I prefer if you do it with Weglot but but you can try with others.
Eric Karkovack (22:35)
Sure.
Augustin (22:37)
But but it's possible to really run tests. So what I can share is one of I mean a learning we have from one of our customers. We had a great customer, he's still a customer, that is doing short video editable for short video. and what they did
is that they looked at their Google Analytics and they tried to see okay, we have traffic coming from either countries we do not address in our languages or from users that have in their user agents languages we don't have on our websites. So it gives an idea of okay that thing we don't we don't serve them, but they they we still have people coming into the website. So what they did is that I think if I remember well they
They added maybe 12 languages, I think. And they just let the 12 languages like this. They didn't touch the translations. They just let the translations run for like a month.
After months they look at the results and they saw increases in in in in visibility and traffic in some of them. So three country three languages they decided to invest more. And so by investing more in in it means both
add a couple of instructional rules in transitions to increase the the the the customization of the of the transitions and on on one hand and on the other hand it's also doing some marketing
either it's SEO oriented, SCA or or or influence marketing but in these countries. And what they saw is a fifty percent increase in conversion in Germany for example. And I really like the approach. We we we liked it so much that we we we did it on our own website. so yeah that's maybe the the one of the framework people can use quite easily. You can you can do it in
during a three-month for example period. it works well for products or services that are
almost only online available online. It's it's I think it's harder for it's for e-commerce it can work too but it has maybe more constraints to to be taken into account. And if you're selling physical services or or or things like that, it's it's harder. So if you're really a pure online player, that's a really good way to to
to use or to test multilingual. If you're doing e-commerce, there are also ways to do that. Maybe you can do 12 countries at one time or you need to trick a bit at the beginning. But maybe for them I will I will have less countries and at first and maybe time loop a bit a bit shorter.
Eric Karkovack (25:18)
Yeah, that that that's a great approach though. Look at your analytics, see
what other languages your visitors speak and where they're coming from, and then you can create a plan based on that. And that now we have tools that even if you don't have someone in your organization who speaks that other language, you have tools like Weglot to help you along in that journey and expand your your market. it it seems like a no brainer sort of at this point. you know, if you are selling to to other places besides just
one
one locale and even here in the United States we have
Even local businesses that may serve communities that speak a variety of languages. I work with a healthcare center in my town that has translated into about a dozen languages because they have folks coming from all over the world that you know speak many different languages who are patients there, so they need documentation and things like that. So it it makes sense to look at your analytics, see what people are what other languages are out there, and then implement them into your
Augustin (26:19)
Yes, we do.
Eric Karkovack (26:21)
Alright, well th Augustine, thank you so much for for joining us today. Where can people connect with you and Weglot online?
Augustin (26:29)
they can connect with us with Weglot on our website, www.weglot.com. we're also quite active on LinkedIn, so they can follow us on LinkedIn and yeah, I mean they can reach out, have a contact form on LinkedIn. We answer to every message, so feel free.
Eric Karkovack (26:46)
Wonderful, wonderful. Well thank you for joining us and thanks to everyone in our audience for watching and listening today. Come visit us over at the WP Minute.com slash subscribe. You can grab our newsletter and support the work that we do here at the WP Minute. Thanks, and we will see you next time.
Augustin (27:02)
Thank you very much, Eric. Thank you everyone.