Translate Your WordPress Site to Japanese (日本語)
Everything you need to publish your WordPress site in Japanese: market size, engine support, setup steps and SEO specifics.
Why translate your website to Japanese?
Japanese is spoken by roughly 125M people across markets like Japan. A Japanese version of your site opens that audience to your content and products, and because far less web content exists in most languages than in English, translated pages often rank faster for the same topics.
Key markets for Japanese
Which translation engine should you use for Japanese?
Both major engines support Japanese. DeepL typically produces the most natural output for it and offers formality control (formal/informal address), while Google Cloud Translation costs slightly less per character and has a generous free tier. Transxlate lets you pick either with your own API key.
Google Translate
Supported
~$20 per 1M characters via Cloud Translation API. First 500K characters each month are free — enough to translate roughly 80,000 words to Japanese at no cost.
DeepL
Supported
Excellent quality for Japanese, including formality control (formal/informal address). Free tier: 500K characters/month.
How to translate WordPress to Japanese — 4 steps
- 1
Install Transxlate
Download the plugin from your transxlate.com account (free plan available) and activate it — the setup wizard opens automatically.
- 2
Add Japanese as a target language
Pick your default language and select Japanese in the wizard. The language URL is created instantly.
- 3
Connect your API key
Paste a Google Cloud Translation or DeepL key and switch on automatic translation. You pay the provider directly at wholesale rates.
- 4
Refine visually
Open any translated page with ?trx-edit=1 and click any sentence to perfect it. Human edits permanently override the machine.
What about Japanese SEO?
Your Japanese pages live on real, indexable URLs (/ja/...), each with the correct lang attribute. With the Pro SEO pack, hreflang alternates connect every language version so Google shows Japanese speakers the Japanese page. Translated titles and descriptions are generated from your translated content automatically.
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ja" href="https://example.com/ja/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.com/" />
Full reference: see the hreflang="ja" page for sitemap syntax and common mistakes. hreflang ja reference →
Frequently asked questions
How do I translate my WordPress site to Japanese?
Install the Transxlate plugin, choose Japanese as a target language in the setup wizard, connect your own Google or DeepL API key and enable automatic translation. The whole site is served at /ja/ within minutes, and you can refine any sentence visually.
How much does it cost to translate a website to Japanese?
With your own API key you pay wholesale rates: roughly $1.20 for a 10,000-word site or $6.00 for 50,000 words via Google Cloud Translation — and the first 500K characters each month are free. There is no per-word markup.
Is machine translation good enough for Japanese?
Yes for most content: Japanese is supported by both Google and DeepL, and DeepL's quality on this language is widely considered excellent. Review legal and high-conversion pages by hand using the visual editor.
Does Japanese need any special technical setup?
No. Japanese uses the Kanji/Kana script and works out of the box: Transxlate sets the lang attribute, creates the /ja/ URL prefix and emits hreflang automatically (Pro).
Keep exploring
Publish your site in Japanese today
Free plan available — translate into Japanese with your own API key in under five minutes.