How to set up multisite for multi language?

Question

I am getting headache about this. How easy to do this?

I have a site in US english.

1. Now :

• Want to create three sites for .de, .es, .co.uk so the sites will be
• www.mysite.com - default site
• www.mysite.de
• www.mysite.es
• www.mysite.co.uk

Can I use multisite (network site) for this purpose? So then database will remain as I have now. (Single database for all site)

2. Customer expects to:

• They will update contents in www.mysite.com only
• Those contents should be ADDED and TRANSLATED to other sites automatically.
• Current sites whole content should be ADDED and TRANSLATED to other sites automatically when the sites are created.

Can I do this without plugins? If I want to use plugins is there any free plugins for this?

3. Current site have custom posts and custom fields.

These also should be ADDED and TRANSLATED to other sites automatically. Comments too. Can I do this without any plugin? Or a plugin is needed for this?

4. Current site uses this plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-social-login/ What about this compatibility with multisite?

Answer 1

I will answer to my best ability point by point.

1. Yes, wp multisite would be ideal for this and it will all be in one database.

2. Not easy to do without a plugin, but yes there are plugins available for translations. However issues might arise, especially with regards to the customer's expectations.
   a) This can be a problem, as the translation plugins available out there are imperfect; it may mistranslate so in the end customer cannot expect to only update the main site.
   b) As with the previous point, automatic translations may not be perfect. You need to manage the customer's expectations here.
   c) Again, automatic translations are still imperfect for now. It may be better for your case and the languages you need to translate to but I can tell you now it's rubbish for Asian languages.
   So in this scenario, automatic translations may either make your life easier or you/your client may have to put in more work and translate and/or fix the translations manually.

3. I am not aware of any plugins that do this, however I am not saying it does not exist. I do want to reiterate the point though that automatic translations can cause issues.
4. Yes this plugin can be used on a multisite without any issues as far as I know.

Good luck with your project, and do manage your client's expectations. The technology is there but it's not quite perfect yet. There are still some jobs left for humans after all :)

Edit: I used this tutorial when I had to set up a multi-lingual multisite --> http://wplang.org/wordpress-multisite-multilingual/

I still had to fix a number of translations especially for Chinese language. That doesn't translate automatically very well at all.