Transliterado for WordPress

I was editing a Swedish blog post and kept getting this weird slug: “kaffe-macka” instead of “kaffe-macka”. Like, the umlauts were just gone. I thought WordPress was broken, but no - it was just stripping out diacritics like they were trash. Then I found Transliterado for WordPress. Honestly, it’s such a tiny plugin, but it fixed my whole workflow. No more manual slug edits after publishing. Just set it up once and forget about it.

The good stuff

It actually handles transliteration properly. For example, when I published a Finnish post with “ä”, “ö”, and “å”, the slug came out as “maksut-korkeat” instead of some ASCII mess. The plugin supports multiple language systems, so you can pick how to handle each one - like choosing between different ways to turn “ç” into “c” or “ch” depending on the language. That’s way more thoughtful than just dropping accents altogether.

And yeah, it lets you retroactively fix old posts. I ran it on my entire site, and boom - all my French and German categories now have proper accents in the URL. No more “cafe” turning into “cafe” when the original was “café”. It even preserves existing slugs if you don’t want to change them. Clean, smart, and doesn’t overwrite anything unless you ask.

The not-so-good

It’s not flashy. There’s no dashboard, no visual preview, just a basic settings page. You’re not going to get hand-holding. And since the developer is unknown, there’s no real support channel. If something breaks, you’re kind of on your own. But honestly, that hasn’t been an issue - it’s just doing its job quietly.

Also, only a few languages are supported. If you’re working with Thai or Arabic, this won’t help. And it doesn’t do automatic translation - it’s strictly for slug cleanup. So if you’re looking for full multilingual SEO tools, this isn’t it. But if you’re just trying to keep your URLs clean in European languages, it’s perfect.

Bottom line

If you’re using WordPress for a non-English site and care about clean, accurate URLs, Transliterado for WordPress is worth installing. It’s free, lightweight, and does exactly what it promises. For anyone tired of seeing “cafe” instead of “café” in their links, this is a no-brainer. Download it. Set it. Done.