Tag: translate wordpress plugins

How to Translate WordPress Websites in 2023 (Beginnerâ€™s Guide)
A multilingual website is a great way to open your brand to different countries and people, allowing you to share your content with people from around the globe in a language they can understand. This can be done in various ways. In WordPress, you can easily translate your website into multiple languages using a top multilingual plugin like TranslatePress. In this guide, we’ll explain the options available and show beginners how to translate WordPress websites in an easy step-by-step process.

Why Translate a WordPress Website?

There are many reasons why it is a good idea to translate your WordPress website. Here are a few to ponder on:
- Better Index Your Site with Google and Search Engines: When translating your WordPress website with an automatic translator, you may lose search traffic as your pages aren’t indexed. Luckily, WordPress allows you to translate your WordPress website manually with accurate human translations. This leads to a better-indexed website easily found by those who need it most.
- Provide a Better Web Experience for Users: When users can understand your website in their home language, they interact better with your website. Using local phrases, idioms, and dialects is a great way to make users feel at home when navigating your website.
- Increase Traffic and Expand Your Brand: Having your website in multiple languages can expose your brand to new demographics. This, in turn, can lead to greater global brand awareness and increased website traffic from new countries.
- Provide Better Customer Service: A multilanguage website gives your customers the help they need in a language they understand. When coupled with modern tools like an AI chatbot that can function in multiple languages, you can give your clients exceptional service that’ll have them return to your website.
Ways to Translate WordPress Websites

WordPress has many ways in which it can have a website translated. Depending on your website goals, there might be some methods that work better for you than others:
- Automatic Translation Plugins: WordPress has many translation plugins that automatically translate your website. While this is the easiest way to build your multilingual website, there can be some pitfalls. With some plugins, like the free version of GTranslate, you depend on third-party software to translate the content for users on their browser, so you can’t edit the translation or have it indexed for search engines. Ideally, you should use a plugin that includes auto-translation features for actual content on your page.
- Human Translation: Manually inputting the translation for your website ensures that you have the highest quality when building your multilingual site. However, this method requires additional translation investment and can be more work when building your website.
- External Translation Tools: It’s also possible to use online tools not based on your WordPress website to translate your website. Websites like Google Translate and Babelfish are platforms where you can input words, phrases, documents, and websites to be translated. While this is a quick and free way to translate your website, it isn’t user-friendly for visitors who want to experience your website.
- AI Tools and Plugins: With the rise of AI writing software and other AI tools, many use AI chatbots like ChatGPT to translate their content. Some WordPress AI plugins support generating content in dozens of languages. For example, our Divi AI page builder can translate any block of text with a single click on the fly while creating your site.
How to Translate WordPress Websites with a Plugin (step by step)

Now that we know how to translate a WordPress website and why we would consider website translation in the first place, let’s look at the process of translating a WordPress website. You can choose from several fully-featured translation plugins to build your multilingual website. Our list of the best translation plugins has a variety of plugins that can help you build your first multilingual website. For this tutorial, we’ll work with TranslatePress and the WordPress theme Twenty Twenty-Three, a plugin that allows automatic and manual translation for WordPress websites.

Install TranslatePress

To begin, log in to your WordPress dashboard. Then, hover over the Plugins menu item. Next, click Add New. Search TranslatePress, and click the Install Now button on the TranslatePress card.

Once the plugin has finished installing, click the blue Activate Now button. You can choose to opt-in to the TranslatePress. However, we skipped that step.

Choose Default Site Language & Secondary Language

Upon installation, this is what the TranslatePress dashboard and settings look like:

For our tutorial, we will install French as our secondary language. Our default language will be English. To set this up, first, we select our primary language from the Default Language dropdown.

Next, from the All Languages option, select your secondary language. In our case, this will be French (Canadian). You can use the search field to look up your language name. Then, click Add.

If you’d like, you can change the slug used to represent the languages used on your site. Furthermore, using TranslatePress’s automatic translation option, you can decide the formality used during that process. Scroll down and click Save Changes.

Now that our languages are set, let’s save our changes and prepare to create our language switcher.

Create Language Switcher for Your Website

A language switcher is what your users will use to navigate between the different languages on your website’s front end. TranslatePress comes with a variety of ways to show this widget.
- Shortcode: The [language-switcher] shortcode allows you to use the shortcode
- Menu Item: Adds the language switcher to your WordPress menu
- Floating Language Widget: Adds a floating language widget to your website’s frontend
For example, we’ll use the menu item widget of TranslatePress through the Block Editor. To do this, we start by hovering over Appearance. Then, click on Editor.

Once in the Block Editor, click Patterns. This will open the various patterns used by our theme.

Then, scroll down, and under Template Parts, click Header. Finally, click on the snapshot of the Header Template Part on the right-hand side of the screen. Now, we are editing our Header pattern to add the TranslatePress blog to our menu.

Once in the Header part, we can now add the TranslatePress Block to our Header. Click the plus icon. Then, search for the Language Switcher.

Click on the Language Switcher Block. This will add it to the Header Template Part. Notice that it shows both our primary and secondary language. We can go into the TranslatePress settings and edit how it looks. After, click the blue Save button in the top right.

Now, let’s see how we can customize our Language Switcher Block.

Customizing the Language Switcher Block

With the Language Switcher Block, you can easily decide between five different ways of displaying your Block. First, click on the Language Switcher Block. Then, click on the settings icon from the top right. From there, click on the Display dropdown menu. You are presented with the display options. For our theme, we will choose the Full Language Names view. Then, click the blue Save button. Finally, click the WordPress icon on the top left to exit out of the editor and back to the WordPress dashboard.

Now that we have our Language Switcher, we can start translating our content with TranslatePress.

Start Translating Your Content

From the WordPress dashboard, hover over Pages, then click All Pages.

Hover over the page you’d like to translate. From the flyout menu that appears, click Edit.

At the top of the Block Editor, click the blue Translate button.

Now, let’s start translating our Home page. First, we shall manually translate our page.

Manually Translate WordPress with TranslatePress

Once in the TranslatePress Translation Editor, you can manually select the strings and content you want to translate. Under your primary language dropdown, click the dropdown. This lists all the places on your page that are manually translateable.

First, let’s start by translating our page’s body text. Click on the dropdown under your primary language. Then, click the first paragraph of your body text. TranslatePress gives you a preview of the first few lines of the available translation areas of our page string library.

Notice that your current page content is under your first language’s title. Next, enter your human-translated copy for this paragraph. Finally, click the blue save button.

After entering your text, you’ll notice a small identifier, letting you know that this content block has been translated by hand.

Now, let’s exit the Block Editor. Our translated text appears when we go to the front end of our website and switch the language in our language switcher. Also, notice our URL changes to show that we are on the secondary language’s page.

Let’s continue translating other strings on our page, like the page title and a menu. In the TranslatePress translation editor, we can use these small arrows to navigate between strings and blocks of text. Click on these arrows to navigate to the second paragraph of our page. Enter your copy, then click the blue Save button.

Now, our body is fully translated by hand:

But what if we didn’t have access to a translator and wanted to use automatic translation to build our multilingual site? We can do that with TranslatePress.

Translate WordPress Automatically with TranslatePress

You must create a Google Cloud Console account to automatically translate your WordPress website with TranslatePress. Google has a great tutorial on how to make your Google Cloud Console account, as well as your Google Translate API key. With these in hand, we can now go back to TranslatePress.

Hover over Settings. Then, click TranslatePress. Next, click the Automatic Translation tab, and finally, click Yes to Enable Automatic Translation.

Now, you’ll see the settings to control how your website handles automatic translation. First, set the Translation Engine to Google Translate v2. Next, enable Block Crawlers. If you’d like, you can limit the number of translated characters per day. We’ve left this setting to the default. Finally, click the save button.

Equipped with our Google Translate API, let’s test our WordPress website’s new automatic translation settings.

Test Your New Multilingual WordPress Website

Let’s navigate to the front end of our website. We manually translated part of our homepage. However, let’s test out TranslatePress’ automatic translation on our About page. Click on the About link from our menu. Then, click on our secondary language, French, from the Language Switcher widget. This is what our page looks like in our primary language of English:

After our automatic translation, our entire page, including our menu and footer, has been translated into our secondary language:

Having the option of choosing between automatic and manual translation makes TranslatePress the apparent choice for a solid translation plugin.

More WordPress Translation Options

While TranslatePress is a good plugin for translating WordPress, you may need something different for your multilingual site. Here are some options that you may want to consider alongside TranslatePress:
- WPML: The gold standard in WordPress translation, WPML works with more than 40 languages and has over 600 integrations with various themes, plugins, and tools in the WordPress ecosystem.
- Polylang: The most popular multilingual plugin on the WordPress plugin repository, Polylang handles posts, pages, media, categories, post tags, custom post types and taxonomies, and RSS feeds, all while supporting RTL scripts.
- GTranslate: The most straightforward way to bring Google Translate to your WordPress website, this plugin adds a customizable language switcher widget powered by Google Translate to add automatic translation to more than 30 languages.
- Weglot: One of the few translation plugins that provide collaboration functionality within its interface, Weglot can work with over 100 different languages and allows your team to work alongside you as you work through your new multilingual website.
- Multilanguage: With a focus on human translation, this plugin works well for those who already have the translation of their website and only need a tool to assist with bringing their translation to life in WordPress.
Conclusion

There are many benefits to having a multilingual website, and with WordPress plugins, creating one is possible. Whether you need automatic translations from an external service or have already hired a translator to create your website’s multilingual content, a tool can help you translate WordPress effectively. TranslatePress is a plugin that allows automatic and manual translation management in WordPress. Making your multilingual WordPress website with TranslatePress gives you the best of both worlds regarding translation accuracy and ease of use. Consider using this effective plugin the next time you need to add another language to your WordPress website.

The post How to Translate WordPress Websites in 2023 (Beginner’s Guide) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.
20.09.2023
How to Translate a WordPress Plugin in Your Language
Are you looking for a way to translate a WordPress plugin into your language?

By translating a WordPress plugin into another language, you will make it accessible to a broader audience. This allows users from different countries to use the plugin in their native languages.

In this article, we will show you how to easily translate a WordPress plugin into your language.

Why Translate WordPress Plugins?

By default, WordPress is available in many languages and can be used to easily create a multilingual website using a plugin.

Similarly, most of the top WordPress plugins are also translation-ready. All you have to do is ask the plugin author if you can help by contributing translations in other languages.

By translating the plugin, you can increase its reach and create a larger user base. This can lead to more installs, feedback, and exposure for the plugin.

It can also help you establish yourself in the WordPress community and provide you with new networking opportunities with other developers, translators, and businesses in the industry.

You can even add the translation to your portfolio and demonstrate your skills and contributions to the WordPress community.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily translate WordPress plugins in your language. We will cover a few different methods in this post, and you can use the quick links below to jump to the method you want to use:
Method 1: Translate a WordPress Plugin Into Your Language for Everyone

If you want to translate a WordPress plugin in a way that helps other people use the plugin in their languages, then this method is for you.

WordPress.org currently hosts a web-based translation tool that allows anyone to contribute translations for plugins within the WordPress repository.

First, you will need to visit a plugin’s page on the WordPress.org website. Once you are there, just switch to the ‘Development’ tab at the top.

Here, you will see a link asking you to help translate the plugin into your language.

You can simply click on it to start contributing to the plugin translation.

However, if the link isn’t available, then you can visit the Translating WordPress website.

Once there, you will see a list of languages on the screen. From here, find your language and simply click the ‘Contribute Translation’ button under it.

This will take you to a new screen, where you need to switch to the ‘Plugins’ tab.

After that, search for the plugin you want to translate using the search field and then click the ‘Translate Project’ button under it.

This will direct you to the plugin translation page, where you must select the ‘Stable (latest release)’ sub-project from the left column.

If you want to translate the plugin’s development or readme files, then you can choose those sub-projects from the list instead.

Finally, you will be taken to a new page where you will see the original strings in one column and the translations in another.

Keep in mind that you will need to be logged in to your WordPress.org account to contribute translations.

From here, just click on the ‘Details’ link in the right column to open up the string you want to translate.

Once you have done that, a text field will open where you can add a translation for the original string.

Once you are done, simply click the ‘Save’ button to submit your translations.

Method 2: Translate a WordPress Plugin for Your Own Website

If you only want to translate a WordPress plugin for your own website, then this method is for you.

First, you will need to install and activate the Loco Translate plugin. For detailed instructions, please see our beginner’s guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, head over to the Loco Translate Â» Plugins page from the WordPress admin sidebar.

Here, you will see a list of plugins that are currently installed on your website. Just click on the plugin you want to translate.

This will take you to a new screen, where you will see a list of languages available for the plugin, along with the translation progress status for each language.

If the language you want to translate the plugin into is listed there, then simply click on the ‘Edit’ link under it.

If not, then you need to click the ‘New language’ button at the top.

This will direct you to a new page where you can start by selecting a language.

From here, you can pick the ‘WordPress language’ option and then choose your language from the dropdown menu under it.

This option will automatically start using the language file if a user sets the WordPress admin area in this language.

If you don’t want to use a WordPress language, then you can select the ‘Custom Language’ option.

Next, you have to choose where you want to store the translation files. By default, Loco Translate will recommend saving the translation files in its own folder.

However, you can easily change that to save the files in WordPress languages or the plugin’s own languages folder.

Once you have done that, just click the ‘Start translating’ button to continue.

This will take you to a new screen, where you will see a text source section along with a translation field.

You can now start by adding a translation for the source string and then select the next string to translate.

Once you are done, don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button at the top to store your settings.

Method 3: Translate a WordPress Plugin on Your Computer

If you want to translate a WordPress plugin on your computer using gettext translation apps, then this method is for you.

Keep in mind that you can also submit these translations to plugin authors so that they can include them in their plugins.

First, you need to download the plugin you want to translate on your computer. Next, double-click the plugin zip file to extract it.

Once you have done that, you need to open the plugin’s folder and then find and click on the ‘languages’ folder.

You should find a .pot file inside this folder. This is the translation template file that you will need to translate the plugin.

If the plugin doesn’t have a .pot file or a languages folder, then it is most likely not translation-ready.

In that case, you can contact the plugin author and ask if they have any plans for their plugin translation. For more details, please see our guide on how to ask for WordPress support and get it.

Once you have the .pot file, you are ready to translate the plugin into any language.

Next, you need to download and install the Poedit app on your computer, which is a free translation app for Mac and Windows.

After you have the app installed, go ahead and open it up. This will launch the Poedit home screen, where you must click the ‘Create New’ option.

You will now be directed to your computer’s file manager. From here, simply find and select the .pot file for the plugin that you want to translate.

Once you have done that, Poedit will ask you to choose a language for translation from the dropdown menu.

After that, click the ‘OK’ button to continue forward.

Poedit will now show the translation interface, where you will see the list of strings available.

All you have to do is click on a string to select it and provide a translation in the ‘Translation’ field.

Once you are done translating the plugin, go to File Â» Save from the menu bar at the top and name your file after the language name and country code.

For example, if you are saving a French translation for the plugin, then you should save the file as ‘fr_FR’ for French and France.

Poedit will save your translation as .po and .mo files.

Now, all you need to do is place these files in your plugin’s languages folder to start using the translated plugin on your website.

We hope this article helped you learn how to translate a WordPress plugin easily. You may also want to see our beginner’s guide on how to translate your WooCommerce store and our top picks for the best WordPress translation plugins.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post How to Translate a WordPress Plugin in Your Language first appeared on WPBeginner.
24.07.2023
How to Easily Translate Your WordPress with TranslatePress
Do you want to translate your website into another language?

By default, WordPress does not offer an easy way to manage multilingual content. However, you can easily translate your WordPress website by using plugins.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily translate your WordPress website with TranslatePress.

Why Use TranslatePress for Translating a WordPress Website?

The best part about WordPress is that it can be used in any language. Most WordPress themes and plugins can also be used and translated into any language as well.

If your business website has a multilingual audience, then it can be super beneficial to translate your content.

You can rely on machine translations like Google Translate, but these translations are not good and sometimes can be quite misleading.

On the other hand, if youâ€™re using a multilingual WordPress plugin, then you need to create multiple posts which require switching back and forth between different languages.

With the TranslatePress plugin, you can translate your website and content using a live editor and won’t need to create multiple posts for the same content.

You can instantly switch languages from the live editor and can also translate themes and plugins using TranslatePress.

Having said that, let’s see how you can easily translate your WordPress website with TranslatePress.
Step 1: Install TranslatePress in WordPress

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the TranslatePress plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, head over to the Settings Â» TranslatePress page from the WordPress admin dashboard to configure your plugin settings.

From here, you need to switch to the ‘General’ tab.

Now, you first need to choose the default language of your website from the dropdown menu beside the ‘Default Language’ option.

This is the language your WordPress is already downloaded in.

After that, you need to choose the language that you want to translate your site into.

Simply head over to the ‘All Languages’ section, and choose a language you want to translate your website into from the dropdown menu below the ‘Language’ option.

After that, you need to click the ‘Add’ button.

Now scroll down to the ‘Native Language Name’ setting on the page.

Here, you need to select whether you want to display language names in their own language or in English. You can choose ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ accordingly.

The next option is to choose if you want to display the default language name in the URL as a subdirectory. For example, http://example.com/en/.

We recommend leaving this setting as it is because it is better for search engine optimization.

After that, head over to the ‘Force language in custom links’ setting.

The default option for it is ‘Yes’ which will allow the plugin to change custom links for translated languages, making the URLs more SEO-friendly.

In the next option, you can choose if you want to use Google Translate for automatic translations.

The default choice is ‘No’, but you can change that if you would like to use Google Translate.

All you would need to do is provide a Google Translate API key in the next option. You will find a link under the option which will show you instructions on how to get one.

Finally, you will come to the options on how you want to display the language switcher on your website. TranslatePress provides you with three choices.

You can use a shortcode, add a switcher to your navigation menu, or display a floating menu. We will show you how to add the language switcher to your website later in this article.

Now, simply go ahead and click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.

Step 2: Translating Your Website Content

To translate your website, you can either click the ‘Translate Site’ tab on the plugin’s settings page or the ‘Translate Site’ button in your WordPress admin bar.

This will open the live translation editor in a new browser tab.

Now, you need to simply click the blue translate icon present next to any text on your website that you want to translate.

After that, TranslatePress will automatically load the chosen text in the left column of the translation editor.

Once the text is loaded in the column, simply add its transition in the box below and then click the ‘Save Translation’ button at the top to store your changes.

This way, you can translate all the content on any page of your site including navigation menus, buttons, sidebar, widgets, meta-text, and more.

With TranslatePress, you can also instantly start translating any page or post on your site when logged in.

All you would need to do is click on the â€˜Translate Pageâ€™ button on the top to open up the live editor.

Another benefit of this plugin is that you only need to translate a specific string once.

Once you have translated a string, the plugin will automatically translate it for you in other places.

Step 3: Adding Language Switcher to Your Website

After translating your site, you will need to add a language switcher to your website.

A language switcher allows users to select a language when they visit your website. It usually displays the flag of each country to indicate languages available on your site.

TranslatePress allows you to add a language switcher by using a shortcode, as a navigation menu item, or as a floating banner.

The language switcher can be displayed as flags, language names, or both.

Adding language switcher in WordPress using shortcode

If you want to add a language switcher in WordPress using shortcode, then head over to the Settings Â» TranslatePress page from the admin dashboard.

Once you’re on the ‘Settings’ page, scroll down on the ‘General’ tab and then copy the [language-switcher] shortcode in the ‘Language Switcher’ section.

You can now paste this shortcode on any page, post, or sidebar widget where you want to display the language switcher.

This is how the language switcher looked on our demo site.

Adding a language switcher to your WordPress navigation menu

If you want to add a language switcher as a navigation menu item, then go to the Appearance Â» Menus page from the dashboard.

Note: If you are using a block-based theme with a full site editor, then this method won’t work for you.

From here, you need to click on the ‘Language Switcher’ tab in the ‘Add Menu Items’ section on the left corner of the screen.

Once the tab expands, simply check the languages that you want to display in the language switcher.

After that, click the ‘Add Menu’ button to add the language switcher as a menu item.

Finally, don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Menu’ button to store your changes.

You will now see a language switcher added to your WordPress navigation menu.

This is how it looked on our test site.

Adding a floating language switcher

If you want to add a floating language switcher, then you simply need to head over to the Settings Â» TranslatePress page from the admin dashboard.

First, you need to scroll down to the ‘Language Switcher’ section in the ‘General’ tab.

From here, make sure to check the box next to the ‘Floating language selection’ option.

You can also switch the position of the floating language switcher from the dropdown menu on the right corner of the screen.

After that, don’t forget to click on the save changes button to store your settings.

You can now visit your website to see the floating language switcher at the bottom of every page on your website.

We hope this article helped you learn how to translate your WordPress site with TranslatePress. You may also want to see our article on how to create a multilingual sitemap in WordPress and our list of the best WordPress plugins for business websites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to ourÂ YouTube ChannelÂ for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us onÂ TwitterÂ and Facebook.

The post How to Easily Translate Your WordPress with TranslatePress first appeared on WPBeginner.
25.03.2023