How to Generate Image Alt Text in Multiple Languages (WordPress)

If your WordPress site serves visitors in more than one language, your image alt text should be in those languages too. English alt text on a Spanish page hurts both accessibility and SEO. Here is why multilingual alt text matters, and how to generate it automatically in 50+ languages.

Why Alt Text Needs to Match the Page Language

Alt text is read aloud by screen readers and indexed by search engines. When the alt text language does not match the page language, two things break:

• Accessibility: A screen reader set to Spanish will read English alt text in a confusing, robotic way. For users who rely on assistive technology, that is a broken experience.
• SEO: Google Images ranks results per language and region. English alt text on a French page gives Google the wrong signal and costs you image search traffic in the language that actually matters to your audience.

How Multilingual WordPress Sites Are Built

Most multilingual WordPress sites use one of two plugins:

• WPML: The most popular paid translation plugin. Each piece of content has language-specific versions.
• Polylang: A widely used free and pro option that links translated posts together.

Both handle translating your text content well. Neither writes alt text for your images. That is a manual job that almost never gets done, which means your translated pages ship with missing or English-only alt text.

The Manual Approach (and Why It Fails)

In theory you could write alt text for every image, in every language, by hand. In practice, a site with 500 images and 3 languages needs 1,500 alt text descriptions. That is a multi-week project that competes with every other priority, so it slips, and your images stay undescribed.

This is the same problem covered in our guide on automating WordPress alt text, multiplied by the number of languages you support.

Generate Alt Text in 50+ Languages Automatically

Altomatic generates AI alt text in 50+ languages, including Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, and more. Instead of describing your image in English and translating it, the AI describes the image directly in your chosen language, so the result reads naturally to a native speaker.

Set Your Language Once

In the Altomatic plugin settings, open the Alt Text Generation section and pick your language from the Alt text language dropdown. Every image you optimize from then on gets alt text in that language. Compression, WebP and AVIF conversion, and bulk processing all work exactly the same.

Works Alongside WPML and Polylang

Set the language to match the primary language of your site or section, then bulk optimize your media library. For sites that publish in several languages, you can set the language before processing each batch of images. Your translation plugin handles the page content, and Altomatic handles the image descriptions.

Multilingual Alt Text Best Practices

• Match the page, not the visitor: Set alt text to the language the page is written in, so it lines up with how search engines index that page.
• Keep it concise: The 125 character guideline applies in every language. See our alt text SEO best practices.
• Do the back catalog: Use bulk alt text generation to fix existing images, not just new uploads.
• Stay compliant: Accessibility requirements apply to every language version of your site.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which languages does Altomatic support?

Altomatic generates alt text in 50+ languages covering the major European, Asian, Middle Eastern, and other world languages. You select your language in the plugin settings.

Does it work with WPML and Polylang?

Yes. Altomatic works alongside any translation plugin. It handles your image alt text while WPML or Polylang handles your translated content.

Will it translate my existing English alt text?

Altomatic generates fresh alt text directly in your chosen language by analyzing the image, which reads more naturally than translating existing English descriptions word for word.