Maker story · Tranzly
From one language to many: Neil Lock and Tranzly
Maker Neil Lock, Co-founder and developer · United Kingdom
Posted · 2 minutes, maker to maker
How it started
Tranzly is a WordPress translation plugin that Neil Lock builds, developed, sold and supported by his company, Zinn Digital® Ltd. The plugin was first published on WordPress.org in October 2020. On his own site, Neil describes his WordPress plugins as built to WordPress.org's standards, translated, and maintained by the team that runs his hosting.
The problem
Adding languages to WordPress often meant giving up page speed and search clarity. Plugins that rewrite every page on the fly add database queries, set cookies that defeat page caches, and leave search engines unsure which page is which language. And most translation plugins meter words, so the bill grows with the site.
What he built
Tranzly turns every page, product and menu into a real page in each language, with its own translated address, so /about/ becomes /de/ueber-uns/ and the old address redirects permanently. Each version carries reciprocal hreflang with x-default and its own canonical, and every language appears in the sitemap of WordPress or of Yoast SEO, Rank Math, SEOPress or All in One SEO. DeepL or an AI model, on the owner's own key, does the translating, with the estimated cost shown before it starts and no word counting by Tranzly. Pro brings the complete WooCommerce shop with prices in the visitor's currency, Elementor, Divi and Bricks, a glossary, translation memory and imports from WPML, Polylang and TranslatePress.
The hard parts
The challenge was speed, so a translated page costs at most two database queries and no cookie, and page caches carry on working. The proof is a measurement on a clean WordPress test site (1 October 2026, Tranzly 3.22.0): 0.1 kB more, 0 third-party requests, phone Lighthouse performance 100 before and 100 after. Layouts are left alone, since only the words are translated, and once a person corrects a translation, re-translation leaves it alone.
Milestones
Two dates mark the way: 21 October 2020 on WordPress.org, and 30 September 2026, when version 3.18.0 brought Tranzly 3 there. WordPress.org lists it as active on more than 7,000 sites, while tranzly.io shows the plugin at work in 58 languages.
What's next
Tranzly keeps shipping: version 3.27.31 is tested with WordPress 7.1, and the features page is listed from the plugin itself, so it changes when the plugin does. Its 73 tools let AI assistants like Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor translate a site on the owner's behalf.
