Vaani – AI Translation & Audio for Indian Blogs

Vaani adds per-post, reader-facing translations to an English-primary WordPress site using Sarvam AI. The original English post stays canonical; an admin opts individual posts/pages into Indian-language translations that edit as native Gutenberg blocks and get revision history for free.

Vaani (वाणी) means "voice, speech" — the name spans both the text-translation and the per-language audio features.

This is not a locale-first multilingual solution (WPML/Polylang). The site itself stays English — navigation, archives, and the default experience are English — and a reader chooses to read a specific post in, say, Tamil. Language selection is per-post, not sticky.

Project status

Vaani is a young, experimental project. It works well for typical block-editor posts and pages, but it hasn't been exhaustively tested across every kind of blog content, block, and theme yet — so try it on a staging site or a few posts first and review the results before rolling it out widely. Your original posts and pages are never modified, so it's safe to experiment.

Bug reports and feedback are very welcome — please open an issue. This is an experimental side project with no guaranteed maintenance schedule, so responses and fixes may be delayed — but every report genuinely helps and is appreciated.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.4+
• PHP 8.0+
• A Sarvam AI API key (free credits on signup at sarvam.ai)

Installation

The distributed zip is self-contained — vendor/ (Composer + Action Scheduler) and dist/ (compiled JS/CSS) are committed, so no build step is required to run it.

1. Copy the vaani folder into wp-content/plugins/ (or install the zip).
2. Activate Vaani in Plugins.
3. Go to Settings → Vaani, add your Sarvam API key, and click Test connection.

Usage

1. Enable languages — in Settings → Vaani, choose the target languages to offer and which post types are translatable (posts on by default, pages opt-in).
2. Choose a method — Settings → Vaani → Translation:

   • Translation — converts meaning into the target language. Pick a model:

     • Mayura — supports translation tone (formal / colloquial / code-mixed) and speaker gender; up to 1000 characters per request.
     • Sarvam Translate — formal tone only, speaker gender supported; up to 2000 characters per request and more languages.

     Speaker gender applies to both models; tone applies to Mayura only.

   • Transliteration — converts script, not meaning: the original words are written in the target script, spelled phonetically (e.g. English → Devanagari). Useful for technical posts with English terms that have no native equivalent. Options: numerals (international 0-9 vs native script) and an optional spoken form.

3. Translate — in the block editor, open the Vaani sidebar (the translation icon in the editor toolbar). Its Translations section lists every enabled target language; click Translate now for one. The work runs in the background (Action Scheduler) and never blocks the editor — click Refresh to pull the result. When it finishes, the row shows Translated with an Edit link; the translation opens in the block editor as native blocks.
4. Re-translate — once a translation exists the button reads Re-translate. It regenerates from the latest saved source content and overwrites in place (same post, so revision history is preserved). When you edit the English source, its translations show a (stale) badge until re-translated. A failed run shows Failed with the Sarvam error.
5. Translate in bulk — from the Posts/Pages list, select rows and choose Vaani: Translate to all enabled languages to queue them at once.

Settings changes (method/model/tone/gender) apply to the next translation; existing translations are not auto-regenerated.

Audio (text-to-speech)

In the Audio section of the Vaani sidebar, click Generate for a language to synthesize an MP3 via Sarvam TTS. It runs in the background and is stored in the media library; click Refresh to pull the result.

To show a "Listen" player, add the Vaani Audio Player block to your original post where you want it (it's also available as an opt-in the_content prepend). You add it once on the original; it renders automatically on each language version, playing that page's audio at the same position. See Placing the switcher & audio blocks.

Reading translations (front end)

• Published translations are served at clean path-prefixed URLs — e.g. /hi/about/ for the Hindi version of /about/. The original post is never altered.
• A language switcher (the Vaani Language Switcher block, or a widget of the same name) links to the languages a post is available in. Selection is per-post: switching applies to the current post only, not the whole site.
• hreflang alternate tags are emitted for search engines, with x-default on the original.
• SEO meta (optional): when Yoast SEO is active, enable Settings → Vaani → SEO → Yoast SEO meta to translate the Yoast title, meta description, and social (OG/Twitter) fields alongside content.

Placing the switcher & audio blocks

The Vaani Language Switcher and Vaani Audio Player are added to your original English post in the block editor, wherever you want them to appear. They are dynamic, language-aware blocks: each one renders the current page's language automatically, so you place a block once on the original and it shows up at the same position on every language version — /, /hi/, /gu/, and so on.

Because the original is the single source of truth for these blocks, adding, moving, or removing one updates all languages immediately — no need to re-translate, and your reviewed translation edits are never touched. (Prefer not to use blocks? A Vaani Language Switcher widget and opt-in the_content filters — vaani_append_switcher / vaani_append_audio_player — are available too.)

Usage & cost

Dashboard → Vaani usage shows this month's translations, audio count, and an estimated INR spend; the Vaani sidebar shows each post's own running estimate. Estimates are based on a local log of every Sarvam call.

What gets translated

• Post title, block-editor post_content — text within blocks, plus image alt and link title — and the post excerpt.
• Non-translatable blocks are passed through untouched: code, HTML, embed, preformatted, shortcode.
• Optionally, Yoast SEO title/description/social fields (when Yoast is active and enabled).

Out of scope (v1): custom fields / page-builder content, WooCommerce data, taxonomy/menu/widget strings, and on-the-fly reader-triggered translation (everything is pre-generated by the admin).

AI Disclosure

Vaani relies on Sarvam AI, a third-party AI service, to produce translations and text-to-speech audio. It is not an officially affiliated or bundled service — you must supply your own Sarvam API key, and your use is governed by Sarvam's terms.

• What is sent: when an admin triggers a translation or audio generation, the relevant content (post title, block content, excerpt, and — if enabled — Yoast SEO title/description/social fields) is sent to Sarvam's API over HTTPS for processing. Nothing is sent during normal front-end page views; translations and audio are pre-generated and served from your own site.
• When it happens: only on an explicit admin action (Translate now, Re-translate, Generate audio, or the bulk action). Vaani never sends content automatically on publish.
• AI-generated output: translations and audio are machine-generated and may contain inaccuracies. Review them — they open as editable Gutenberg blocks — before relying on them.
• Third-party terms & privacy: see Sarvam's Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and Trust Center for how your data is handled. Verify these links against Sarvam's site, as the URLs can change.

Development disclosure

This plugin was developed with the assistance of Claude (Anthropic's AI). All code, structure, and documentation were generated through a collaborative session between the author and Claude Code. The implementation has been reviewed and is maintained by the author.

How it works

• Each translation is stored as one private vaani_translation post per (source post × language) — real post_content, so it edits as native blocks and gets revisions. It links back to the source via meta (_vaani_source_id, _vaani_lang, _vaani_source_hash, _vaani_status) — never post_parent.
• A single language registry maps each internal code to its Sarvam API code and hreflang value (e.g. Odia or → od-IN), so language codes never drift across the plugin.
• All Sarvam HTTP goes through one client with centralized auth, timeout, and retry/backoff.
• Staleness is detected by hashing the source content at translation time and comparing on later edits.
• Trashing or deleting a source post mirrors onto its translations (trashed/restored/deleted), and deleting removes the generated audio attachments too.

Uninstalling

Deleting Vaani from Plugins is destructive: it removes the plugin's settings, every generated translation post, the generated audio attachments, all _vaani_* post meta, and the wp_vaani_usage table. Your original posts and pages are never touched. Deactivating (rather than deleting) leaves all data in place.

Development

PHP autoloading is Composer PSR-4 (Vaani\ → src/); front-end/editor assets are built with 10up-toolkit (assets/ → dist/).

composer install          # PHP deps (Action Scheduler)
composer dump-autoload -o  # after adding classes
npm install                # JS toolchain
npm run build              # compile assets to dist/ (or: npm run start to watch)

Commit both vendor/ and dist/ so the GitHub zip works without a build step.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later