qTrad is a new multilingual plugin for WordPress that carries on where qTranslate and qTranslate-X left off. It reads the translations those plugins stored, adds a modern editor, accessible language controls and multilingual SEO, and it is free.
A site that still runs qTranslate or qTranslate-X, or that has been stuck on an old WordPress version because of them, can switch to qTrad and keep every translation, URL and language setting. Nothing is converted and nothing has to be entered again.
The first working build was finished on 28 September 2026, the code is on GitHub, and the plugin is in the WordPress.org plugin directory.
This is the story of why it exists.
One post, every language
Most multilingual plugins create one post per language and link the copies together. qTranslate did it differently. All translations of a post lived in that same post, side by side, separated by small language markers in the text:
<!--:en-->Hello<!--:--><!--:de-->Hallo<!--:--><!--:es-->Hola<!--:-->The editor showed one language at a time and switching was a single click. There were no duplicate posts to keep in sync, no copies of categories and tags, no extra tables. Later versions used square brackets, [:en]Hello[:de]Hallo[:es]Hola[:], and some tools wrote swirly brackets, but the idea stayed the same. For a site owner it felt like editing one site, not three.
A short history
2008. Qian Qin published qTranslate on WordPress.org on 20 February 2008. It became one of the standard answers to “how do I make my WordPress site multilingual” and collected 183 reviews, 104 of them five stars.
2013 to 2014. Development slowed down and then stopped, and every new WordPress version broke something else. Other developers stepped in with forks. mqTranslate appeared in February 2013. qTranslate Plus followed in September 2014, describing itself in its readme as “an unOfficial modified version of qTranslate created to be compatible with WordPress 3.9 or highter”, and stating plainly that “at this moment the original plugin is dead”. zTranslate was a third fork.
December 2014. John Clause published qTranslate-X. Its readme says it “started as a descendant of qTranslate, which has apparently been abandoned by the original author” and that it “is a hybrid of all of them and fixes a few bugs in each of them”, meaning the forks above. qTranslate-X became the version most sites used. It gathered 281 reviews with an average of 4.7 stars, and integration modules for other plugins followed.
2016. qTranslate-X stopped too. Its last update on WordPress.org is from July 2016 and the last commit in its repository from June 2016. Reviews from the following months tell the rest. “No support, plugin development seems dead.” “Not maintained anymore. Not working on newest versions of wordpress.” “Breaks with 4.8.”
28 November 2017. WordPress.org closed qTranslate, mqTranslate and qTranslate Plus on the same day, with no reason given. zTranslate had already been closed in January 2015.
June 2018. A group of users started qTranslate-XT on GitHub, “an eXTended version of qTranslate-X that we are reviving with a new community, since the original plugin is abandoned by its author”. It kept the plugin alive through the arrival of the block editor, which its readme calls “a critical milestone for the survival of this plugin”. It was never published on WordPress.org, so it has to be installed by hand and does not update itself. It is still maintained; the repository has 605 stars and its latest release, 3.16.2, is from 25 October 2026.
31 August 2021. WordPress.org closed qTranslate-X as well, this time with the reason “Security Issue”. From that day on, no plugin with the qTranslate approach could be installed from the directory.
Why people missed it
Reviews written long after development had stopped say it best. “Still the best and straightforward”, wrote one user in 2019. “Still a great plugin in 2020”, wrote another. Many sites kept running a closed plugin for years because nothing else worked the same way, and because their content was stored in a format only the qTranslate family could read. Moving to a different multilingual plugin meant splitting every post into several, rebuilding menus and categories per language, and changing every URL.
ProWoos was one of those site owners. We ran qTranslate, and later qTranslate-X, on several multilingual websites, and when both were closed we wanted that approach to stay available. That is what qTrad is for.
What qTrad does
qTrad is an independent continuation of qTranslate and qTranslate-X. Existing translations keep working exactly as they are, because qTrad reads all three marker formats, the comment markers of the original qTranslate, the square brackets of qTranslate-X and the swirly brackets, and it reuses the qtranslate_* settings for languages, locales, flags and URLs. A site can also move from qTranslate-XT to qTrad, or back, without converting anything. Activation never rewrites posts, and a one-time report afterwards lists the qTranslate data found on the site.
On top of that it adds what the old plugins never had:
- language buttons in the block editor that switch in place, and the classic editor as before,
- language controls that work with a keyboard and a screen reader, with full language names and announced changes,
- multilingual SEO with reciprocal hreflang links and multilingual sitemap entries, alongside Yoast SEO and Rank Math,
- translated menus, translated slugs, custom fields and options, Advanced Custom Fields, WooCommerce and per-language date formats,
- a “Missing in” filter in the post lists and a Translations box on the dashboard that show what still needs translating,
- safe saving, so translations in disabled languages are never lost.
Every release runs through a test matrix of twelve WordPress and PHP combinations, from WordPress 5.8 with PHP 7.4 up to the current versions, with browser and accessibility checks included.
Where to get it
The plugin is free under the GPL. It is in the WordPress.org plugin directory, so it installs from Plugins → Add New like any other plugin, and the source is on GitHub. The support page has installation steps, the migration notes for qTranslate, qTranslate-X and qTranslate-XT sites, and the answers to the usual questions. If you run one of the sites that kept qTranslate alive all these years, qTrad was written for you.
