WakaLang

WakaLang is a lightweight multilingual plugin for WordPress. It keeps the visitor’s chosen language stable across the whole site using clean, URL-prefixed addresses (for example /en/about/ and /ja/about/), and is designed to be simple for manual translation workflows on technical blogs and documentation sites.

The free plugin is fully usable on its own and makes no external network calls.

Free features

• Register the languages your site offers (code, locale, names, URL prefix, default).
• URL-prefix routing: every page is reachable under each language prefix (/en/…, /ja/…), with the prefix as the single source of truth for the active language.
• A language switcher with automatic header/footer placement, an editor block, the [wakalang_switcher] shortcode, and the wakalang_language_switcher() template function — with optional flags rendered as Unicode emoji (no external requests).
• hreflang alternate links (and an optional x-default) for translated content.
• Internal links, menu links, the site/home link, and block-theme (FSE) navigation all keep the current language’s URL prefix.
• Link posts, pages, and taxonomy terms into translation groups from a post or term editor, and create draft translations.
• Archive, search, RSS/Atom feeds, and the core wp-sitemap.xml are scoped to the current language.
• Translate taxonomy terms (category, tag, custom taxonomy) with per-language name and slug.
• Manage a per-translation SEO title and meta description, handed to WordPress core and to Yoast / Rank Math (their own meta is never touched).
• Translate the site title and tagline per language.
• The admin locale follows the URL language so editing screens match the language you are working in.
• Filter the post list by language and review an untranslated-coverage report on the Tools screen.
• Works alongside Markdown Renderer for GitHub: WakaLang owns the site-wide language spine without duplicating its switcher.

Privacy

WakaLang does not call any external service, does not track visitors, and stores no personal data. It runs entirely on your own site.

Third Party Services

WakaLang Free does not connect to any third-party service, CDN, telemetry endpoint, license server, or translation API. It serves its assets from your WordPress site and performs language routing locally.

Optional add-on

A separate paid add-on is planned for AI-assisted, Markdown-safe translation using an administrator-provided API key, glossary, translation memory, and differential translation. The free plugin contains none of that add-on code and works fully without it.

Source Code

WakaLang ships as readable PHP; the only compiled asset is the block editor script.

• assets/blocks/language-switcher/build/index.js is the compiled Language Switcher block editor script. Its human-readable source ships in this plugin under assets/blocks/language-switcher/src/ (index.js, edit.js, block.json).

To rebuild it, install Node.js, run npm install, then npm run build:blocks (which runs @wordpress/scripts). No other plugin code is minified or generated by a build tool.