How to Build a Multilingual Government Website

Governments serve everyone who lives in their community — and not everyone reads the same language. A multilingual government website makes services, notices and documents available in the languages residents actually speak, which is often a matter of inclusion and, in some places, a legal requirement. This guide explains how to build one in WordPress.

Why multilingual matters for government

A single-language site quietly excludes part of the public it is meant to serve. Offering content in more than one language improves access to services, builds trust, and helps meet accessibility and equity obligations. It also widens your reach in search, since each translated page can rank for queries in its own language.

WPML or Polylang: which translation plugin?

WordPress does not translate a site on its own — you add a translation plugin. The two common choices:

	WPML	Polylang
Type	Premium	Free + paid pro
Best for	Full sites, professional workflows, string translation	Smaller sites, simpler needs
Theme support	Widely supported, including Egovt	Widely supported
Translation management	Built-in, with roles and services	Basic (pro adds more)

Egovt is explicitly WPML-ready, which makes it the smoothest path for a government site with many pages, menus and custom content types.

How to build it with WordPress, WPML and Egovt

1. Install and activate WPML (or Polylang) and add the languages you need.
2. Set your default language and how visitors switch languages (a menu or a switcher widget).
3. Translate your core pages, services, departments, documents and events.
4. Translate menus, widgets and any theme strings so the whole interface follows the language.
5. Check that each language has a clean URL structure and that the language switcher is easy to find.

Best practices for a multilingual public-sector site

• Translate the interface, not just the body text — menus, buttons and labels too.
• Give each language its own URL so search engines index them separately.
• Add hreflang tags (WPML does this) so Google shows the right language to each user.
• If you support a right-to-left language, confirm the theme handles RTL layouts.
• Keep translations in sync — when you update a service, update every language.

For where multilingual fits in your overall build, see our government WordPress theme guide.

Why we’d start with Egovt

Egovt is WPML-ready and bundles the services, departments and documents a citizen-facing site needs — all translatable, all editable without code, at $49. Try the live demo.

Frequently asked questions