Google API2 is indeed a paid service. Currently, they charge $20 USD per 1 M characters of text. Depending on the size of the website, this may end up being a costly solution. I found an alternate solution that costs about the same per month with the advantage of allowing more translation traffic data (up to 10 GB per month). I paid someone to develop a module for me that makes Abantecart compatible with this service. It requires a subdomain for each language. For example, es.yourdomain.com for Spanish, cn.yourdomain.com for Chinese, and so on. It provides translation in about 280 languages, but my solution is limited to 10 languages (the same 10 language extensions that are currently available in Abantecart Marketplace). Other advantages of this solution are: (1) The translation data is stored in their cloud server (all you need is to host your web pages in one language. (2) The service is SEO-friendly in the sense that both the page text and meta data (i.e., page title, description, and keywords) are all translated. (3) There is no indication in the source code that the text is machine-translated. (4) The service provides an easy way to edit translations manually, if needed. And last but not least, the website will have language prefixes in top level subdomains, which is good for purposes of Google ranking in the global market. The subdomains are configured in the cPanel. Having an SSL wildcard certificate to go with this solution is a great idea. It would allow customers to check out securely in any language. I'll be happy to share more about this. If interested, please send me a message.
