ukCyrillic script

How to translate WordPress to Ukrainian

Ukrainian (Українська) reaches roughly ~40 millionspeakers. Here's what's actually involved in translating a WordPress site into it — the technical setup, the Ukrainian-specific gotchas, and the SEO.

hreflang
uk
Native
Українська
Direction
LTR
Text length
+10–15% longer than English
Plurals
Complex: 3 plural forms
“Welcome”
Ласкаво просимо

What's specific to Ukrainian

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 Ukrainian:

  • Cyrillic, but distinct from Russian — it has unique letters (ї, є, ґ, і). Don't reuse Russian translations.
  • Confirm fonts cover the full Ukrainian Cyrillic set.
  • Formality: ти (informal) vs. ви (formal).

Step by step

1. Add Ukrainian as a target language

Set your source language, then add Ukrainian (uk) 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 Ukrainian 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 Ukrainian under a language-prefixed path like /uk/. Give pages readable slugs with the slug generator — important for Ukrainian, since Cyrillic characters otherwise become percent-encoded in URLs.

4. Get the Ukrainian SEO right

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

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