ptLatin script

How to translate WordPress to Portuguese

Portuguese (Português) reaches roughly ~260 millionspeakers. Here's what's actually involved in translating a WordPress site into it — the technical setup, the Portuguese-specific gotchas, and the SEO.

hreflang
pt
Native
Português
Direction
LTR
Text length
+15–30% longer than English
Plurals
2 forms
“Welcome”
Bem-vindo

What's specific to Portuguese

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 Portuguese:

  • pt-BR (Brazil) and pt-PT (Portugal) differ in spelling and vocabulary — Brazil is the far larger market.
  • If you target both, use the region codes; if you pick one, pt-BR reaches the most people.
  • Formality: tu / você vary by region; Brazil and Portugal differ significantly.

Step by step

1. Add Portuguese as a target language

Set your source language, then add Portuguese (pt) 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 Portuguese 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 Portuguese under a language-prefixed path like /pt/. Give pages readable slugs with the slug generator.

4. Get the Portuguese SEO right

Add reciprocal hreflang pointing at your pt version (with x-default), set <html lang="pt">, 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 Portuguese 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 Portuguese to your WordPress site in minutes — automatic AI translation, stored in your own database.

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