Multilingual sites

One source, several markets. RSS Retriever works with WPML and Polylang: it imports every item once per language, translates it and links the language versions as translations of each other, so the language switcher of your site works as expected.

Why it pays off

Search engines index each language version separately. A site that publishes the same news in English, German and Spanish reaches three audiences with one set of sources, and translated text is unique in its language.

Setup

Install and configure WPML or Polylang with your languages.
Add the source feed and set it up for the original language: on the Basic tab choose the original language in WPML language or Polylang language, and leave Translation at Do not translate. Name it clearly, for example Garden News (EN).
Add the same feed URL again for every other language, for example Garden News (DE):
- set WPML language or Polylang language to that language;
- on the Advanced tab, set Translation with the same target language;
- choose categories of that language.

Tip: after configuring the first copy, use Export and Mass modify selected feeds to create and adjust the copies quickly.

The RSS Retriever Syndicator with sources, language copies and bulk actions

How language versions are linked

The duplicate check works per language: an item imported in English can still be imported by the German copy of the feed. When that happens, RSS Retriever finds the posts already created from the same source link in other languages and links the new post to them as a translation (WPML translation group or Polylang translations).

Choosing a translator

Option	Strengths
AI Translate	Natural text in a very wide range of languages; works with any AI engine. GPT-4o mini (the default) is fast and inexpensive.
DeepL	High-quality translation for major European and Asian languages; free plan available.
Google Translate	The widest choice of language pairs.
Yandex Translate	Strong for Russian and other Eastern European languages.

If a translation fails, the post of that language is not created; the item is tried again on the next run.

You can also translate with your own prompt instead, for example to adapt the tone for each market:

[ai_generate engine="anthropic-claude-sonnet-4-6" prompt="Translate this article into German for a German audience. Adapt units and idioms. Keep the HTML: %post_content%"]

Deleting posts of one copy deletes all languages

All copies share the same feed URL. Delete posts syndicated from selected feeds on one copy removes the posts of every language. Delete posts in WordPress directly if you need to remove only one language.

Filters and languages

Content filtering runs before translation, so write keywords in the language of the source feed. Items that are filtered out never reach the translation service.