WordPress native Multilanguage feature

WordPress 6.0 and probably 6.1 is where WP is sort of wrapping up Phase 2 (though, work will continue in that area). Moving forward, we should start seeing a shift toward some of Phase 3, and I expect the bulk of that to happen in 2023. It won’t be until that winds down until we really get into the multi-language support for Phase 4.

I’m not sure if there is a good outline for what that will look like because it’s still sometime in the future.

It’s possible that we might see some Phase 4 work in 2023, but that will entirely depend on how the previous phases unfold. My best guess is that 2024 would be when we’ll see a push toward multi-lingual support. But, that’s just a guess at this point.

Thank you for answer, Justin. You really help to make plans for some future projects, where multi-language support needed.

Hope native multi-language and Phase 4 will come without serious delays, as in many countries this is something that needed by default.

This would be a nice feature, but so would be having social sharing buttons, schema.org markup or better SEO data handling. Features like this that extend the functionality of WordPress is the reason the plugin ecosystem exist in the first place. In my opinion, the huge market share of WordPress is directly related to the extendable nature of WordPress.

Having said all that, the fourth phase of “Core implementation for Multi-lingual sites” sounds interesting. I had an idea (when we had a separate forum called Ideas on w.org) that more features should turn into plugins or at least “modules” that could be enabled or disabled (like posting over email, comments system and another old feature called “Press This” that was taken out of core and converted into a plugin a few years ago).

I read before about WP core ML plans but the info by Justin Tadlock is indeed helpful for upcoming projects despite I would have hoped to already adopt core ML next year.

I had a look at the Roadmap:

“Currently, work is being completed on Phase 2 of the Gutenberg project, and Phase 3 (Collaboration) is starting in 2023.”

So hopefully Customization and Collaboration will progress in 2023 to a point that Phase 4 ML Core implementation will be on the horizon for 2024. I think that will be a major leap for WP giving the possibility to run a site (almost) with no plugins based mainly on core functions.