frLatin scriptHow to translate WordPress to French
French (Français) reaches roughly ~310 millionspeakers. Here's what's actually involved in translating a WordPress site into it — the technical setup, the French-specific gotchas, and the SEO.
What's specific to French
Most of translating WordPress is the same in any language, but each language has quirks that break layouts or SEO if you ignore them. For French:
- French uses non-breaking spaces before ; : ! ? — preserve them for correct typography.
- Accented characters are meaningful (é, è, ç) — make sure your fonts and DB use UTF-8.
- fr-CA (Canadian French) differs from fr-FR in vocabulary; split only if you serve both markets.
- Formality: tu (informal) vs. vous (formal) — vous is safest for most sites.
Step by step
1. Add French as a target language
Set your source language, then add French (fr) as a target. With an automatic plugin you don't create a translated copy of every page by hand — it translates on the fly.
2. Translate — automatically or by hand
Machine and AI translation get you French coverage in minutes; review the strings that matter (navigation, calls to action, legal) for the right register. Estimate the cost with the translation cost calculator.
3. Serve it under a clean URL
Publish French under a language-prefixed path like /fr/. Give pages readable slugs with the slug generator.
4. Get the French SEO right
Add reciprocal hreflang pointing at your fr version (with x-default), set <html lang="fr">, and translate titles and meta descriptions. Build the tags with the hreflang generator and verify with the hreflang checker.
Doing it the easy way
Gloty translates your whole site into French automatically with the AI provider you choose, stores it in your own database, and emits the correct hreflang and lang/dir attributes for you. See how it stacks up against Weglot and WPML, or read the pillar guide on making WordPress multilingual.
Add French to your WordPress site in minutes — automatic AI translation, stored in your own database.