Brande Simple Translation is a free WordPress translation plugin for creating a multilingual WordPress website with manual translations and clean, SEO-friendly language URLs.

Translate WordPress Pages and Posts directly inside WordPress, add the language codes you need, and publish translated versions under clean subdirectory URLs such as /en/ and /ru/. The plugin keeps the original Page or Post layout, backgrounds, images, blocks, buttons, spacing and styling untouched while translating visible text.

Brande Simple Translation is designed for website owners who want a lightweight multilingual WordPress solution without external translation services, cloud accounts, tracking or third-party dependencies.

Manual WordPress translation

The plugin provides a clear translation workflow inside the WordPress admin area:

Separate Page translations and Post translations screens that work independently of the active content editor.
Translations > Languages settings page.
Translate shortcuts on the standard WordPress Pages and Posts lists.
Translation panel on Page and Post edit screens.
Side-by-side source text and translation fields.
Only visible Page and Post text is translated; the original layout and stored layout data stay untouched.
Reads text from the rendered Page or Post in the browser, with a saved-content fallback when a preview cannot be read.
Server-side text replacement keeps translated text visible to search engines, with a small browser-side fallback for dynamically rendered text.
Empty translation fields fall back to the default-language text.

No machine translation service is required or connected. You stay in control of the final translated text.

SEO-friendly multilingual WordPress URLs

The first configured language is the default language and uses the normal site URL. Additional languages use clean language-prefixed subdirectory URLs.

Example with et as the first language:

https://example.com/ – Estonian homepage.
https://example.com/contact/ – Estonian page.
https://example.com/en/ – English homepage.
https://example.com/en/contact/ – English page.
https://example.com/ru/contact/ – Russian page.
https://example.com/blog-post/ – Default-language blog post.
https://example.com/en/blog-post/ – English blog post.

Multilingual SEO features include:

Clean language-specific URLs such as /en/ and /ru/.
Compact language-prefixed rewrite rules for WordPress Pages and Posts.
Automatic hreflang tags only for language versions that contain a saved translation.
Automatic x-default tag pointing to the default-language content.
Language-aware canonical URLs for translated Pages and Posts.
Canonical compatibility filters for Yoast SEO, Rank Math and All in One SEO.
Correct HTML lang attribute for the active translated language.
Safe fallback to the default language when a translation is missing.
Permanent 301 redirects from valid old ?lang=en URLs to the clean language-prefixed URL structure.

Permalinks must use any WordPress permalink structure except Plain (?p=123), because Plain permalinks do not support language subdirectory URLs such as /en/ or /ru/.

Language switcher

Brande Simple Translation includes a built-in language switcher.

The automatic language switcher is rendered using the standard WordPress wp_body_open hook.
Place the switcher manually with the shortcode [brande_language_switcher].
The switcher links to the matching language version of the current Page or Post.
Language links include appropriate lang and hreflang attributes.

Language management

Add language codes such as et, en, ru or regional codes such as en-gb.

Enter one language code per line or separate codes with commas.
The first configured language becomes the default language.
The default language uses normal URLs without a language prefix.
Additional languages use clean language-prefixed URLs.
Saving language settings schedules a refresh of WordPress rewrite rules.
The plugin warns about Plain permalinks, conflicting language-code Page or Post slugs and changes to the default language.
Changing the default language does not automatically translate or migrate existing Page or Post content.

Lightweight and multilingual-ready

No external translation service.
No cloud account.
No tracking.
No third-party runtime dependencies.
Unicode-aware visible-text detection for Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, CJK and other writing systems.
Designed to stay lightweight and developer-friendly.

Supported content

The free version translates standard WordPress Pages and Posts.

WooCommerce products, custom post types and taxonomies are not translated in the free version.

More information

For more information, documentation and future updates, visit the official
Brande Simple Translation website.