News Translator Pro

Translates English news posts to /es/ (Spanish), /fr/ (French), and /pt/ (Portuguese) subdirectory URLs with full SEO support.

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What This Plugin Does

Feature	Detail
Indexable subdirectory URLs	/es/mi-articulo/, /fr/mon-article/, and /pt/meu-artigo/ — real crawlable pages
RankMath integration	Translates title, meta description, OG tags, Twitter card, focus keyword, JSON-LD schema
hreflang tags	<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es-ES"> on every English + translated page
Canonical URLs	Each translated page has its own canonical pointing to itself (not the English URL)
XML sitemap	Translated URLs injected into RankMath's post sitemap + a standalone /nt-sitemap.xml
Google News sitemap	Translated posts appear in RankMath's news-sitemap.xml (last 2 days window)
Auto-translate on publish	Optional: translate Spanish, French, and Portuguese the moment you hit Publish
Manual translate	Sidebar panel in the post editor per-language or "Translate All"
Batch tools	Translate missing content or force retranslate all existing articles from Settings > News Translator
Re-translate	Force a fresh translation to pick up edits
Translation caching	Stored in DB — LibreTranslate only called once per post per language
Language switcher	Clean article nav bar plus floating homepage language picker

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Installation

1. Upload the news-translator-pro/ folder to /wp-content/plugins/
2. Activate News Translator Pro in Plugins → Installed Plugins
3. Go to Settings > News Translator and configure your API
4. Click Test LibreTranslate to confirm connectivity
5. If /es/, /fr/, or /pt/ URLs return 404, click Flush Rewrite Rules

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Configuration

LibreTranslate API URL

Option	Value
Hosted (requires API key)	https://libretranslate.com
Docker internal (free, no key)	http://libretranslate:5000

Self-hosting LibreTranslate (recommended for news blogs)

Self-hosting removes API costs, rate limits, and latency:

pip install libretranslate
libretranslate --load-only en,es,fr,pt

Set API URL to http://libretranslate:5000 when WordPress and LibreTranslate share a Docker network and leave API Key blank.

Auto-Translate on Publish

When enabled, the plugin calls LibreTranslate for ES, FR, and PT immediately when you publish a post. Translation happens synchronously — if your LibreTranslate instance is slow, expect a short delay on publish. For very long posts on a remote API, consider leaving this off and translating manually from the editor sidebar.

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How URL Routing Works

WordPress rewrite rules intercept /es/, /fr/, and /pt/ before standard routing:

/es/                    → Spanish archive (latest translated posts)
/es/page/2/             → Paginated archive
/es/mi-titulo-articulo/ → Single translated post
/fr/                    → French archive
/fr/mon-titre-article/  → Single translated post
/pt/                    → Portuguese archive
/pt/meu-artigo/         → Single translated post

Translated slugs are generated from the translated title via sanitize_title().

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SEO Details

hreflang

Every English post and its translated counterparts output a full set of hreflang annotations:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://yoursite.com/my-post/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en"        href="https://yoursite.com/my-post/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es-ES"     href="https://yoursite.com/es/mi-articulo/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR"     href="https://yoursite.com/fr/mon-article/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="pt-BR"     href="https://yoursite.com/pt/meu-artigo/" />

Canonical

Translated pages have their own canonical:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://yoursite.com/es/mi-articulo/" />

RankMath Fields Translated

• rank_math_title → seo_title
• rank_math_description → seo_desc
• rank_math_keywords → seo_keywords
• rank_math_og_title + rank_math_og_description
• rank_math_twitter_title + rank_math_twitter_description
• rank_math_focus_keyword
• JSON-LD @graph Article/NewsArticle entity

Sitemaps

• Translated URLs injected into RankMath's post sitemap via rank_math/sitemap/urlset
• Translated posts appear in RankMath's Google News sitemap via rank_math/sitemap/news_sitemap
• Standalone sitemap available at /nt-sitemap.xml — submit this to Google Search Console alongside RankMath's sitemap
• Sitemap index entry added to RankMath's sitemap index automatically

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Submitting to Google Search Console

1. Go to Google Search Console → Sitemaps
2. Submit https://yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml (RankMath's index — includes translated URLs)
3. Also submit https://yoursite.com/nt-sitemap.xml directly as a supplemental sitemap
4. For Google News, submit https://yoursite.com/news-sitemap.xml (RankMath handles this)

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File Structure

news-translator/
├── news-translator.php             ← Bootstrap, constants, auto-translate hook
├── includes/
│   ├── class-db.php                ← All DB queries (translations table)
│   ├── class-libretranslate-api.php ← LibreTranslate HTTP client
│   ├── class-post-translator.php   ← Translation orchestration + RankMath field harvesting
│   ├── class-rewrite.php           ← /es/ /fr/ /pt/ URL routing + permalink helpers
│   ├── class-frontend.php          ← Language switcher bar
│   ├── class-hreflang.php          ← hreflang + canonical head tags
│   ├── class-sitemap.php           ← RankMath sitemap injection + /nt-sitemap.xml
│   └── class-rankmath.php          ← RankMath filter overrides for translated pages
├── admin/
│   ├── class-settings-page.php     ← Settings > News Translator Pro
│   └── class-meta-box.php          ← Post editor sidebar translation panel
├── assets/
│   └── frontend.css                ← Language switcher styles
└── README.md

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Database Schema

wp_news_translations (
  id             BIGINT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
  post_id        BIGINT,          -- FK to wp_posts
  language       VARCHAR(10),     -- 'es', 'fr', or 'pt'
  title          LONGTEXT,
  content        LONGTEXT,
  excerpt        LONGTEXT,
  slug           VARCHAR(255),    -- translated slug for URL routing
  seo_title      VARCHAR(255),    -- rank_math_title translated
  seo_desc       TEXT,            -- rank_math_description translated
  seo_keywords   TEXT,
  og_title       VARCHAR(255),
  og_desc        TEXT,
  twitter_title  VARCHAR(255),
  twitter_desc   TEXT,
  focus_kw       VARCHAR(255),
  translated_at  DATETIME,
  UNIQUE (post_id, language)
)

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Extending

Add more languages — add to NT_LANGS, NT_LOCALES, NT_FLAGS in news-translator.php. Make sure your LibreTranslate instance has those language models loaded.

Custom post types — in class-rewrite.php change 'post_type' = 'post' queries to include your CPT. Also update the post_type check in nt_auto_translate_on_publish.

Disable auto-translate delay — use wp_schedule_single_event() in nt_auto_translate_on_publish to push translation to a background cron job instead of running synchronously on publish.

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Changelog

See CHANGELOG.txt included in this ZIP for the full version history.

2.6.1

• Moved homepage floating language picker to the compact upper-right position.

• Reduced size and visual weight so it does not cover article/homepage text as aggressively.

• Added Force Retranslate All Existing Articles to Settings > News Translator.

• Added per-language force retranslation for Spanish, French, and Portuguese.

• Added cursor-based AJAX batching so large retranslation jobs can run safely without one giant browser request.

• Preserved the existing Translate Missing Content behavior.

• Force mode overwrites stored translated article fields from the current English source.