WordPress is a global CMS platform and used across the world. Hence, will be covering the steps involved to translate WordPress theme to any language. The main ambition in creating a dedicated website for your business is to achieve more visibility and reach out to more customers. Customers from a different linguistic background will be able to create a personal bond with your website if it speaks their language.
The first step for that is to translate WordPress theme of your website using poedit software. Your WordPress website will have a theme by default. In addition, there are thousands of WordPress themes available for you to choose from. WordPress theme will play a huge part in the overall user experience on your website.
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How to install Poedit software
Poedit is an open-source and cross-platform and gettext (multilingual) catalog editor helps in the language localization process. It is one of the fastest software tools to translate sites and apps. To use poedit, you have to install this software into your system.
- Download the desired version of Poedit Shareware tool
- Select “I accept the agreement” after reading the terms and click the “NEXT” button
3. Now select the destination directory for this software in the tab
4. Click on the “Install” button
5. Now you can see the installation of this software into your system
Steps to translate WordPress theme in your website
Every WordPress theme has a default language. The language template will be available in the WordPress root directory. The naming terminology for the directories to hold the language template will be “languages”.
In some cases, it will be unable to find the location of your WordPress language template. If you face such difficulty, you have to go through the documentation and reach your theme developers to know the place it resides.
- Open Poedit Software
- Select “Create new translation”
3. Go to your theme’s language folder
4. Open the default language file in poedit
Now, poedit asks for the language to be which the file has to be translated. It is advised to name the translated file based on the internationalization standards of WordPress. This internationalized standard has to be followed to translate WordPress theme because it is one of the accepted standards across the world to maintain uniformity and structure of the WordPress community.
- Select the desired language. In this tutorial, we are giving our desired language as Arabic. So the file name should be ar_EG.po. When you save the file, the poedit software will also generate another file ar_EG.mo. You can find all the language codes and country codes list here https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E13214_01/wli/docs92/xref/xqisocodes.html
6. Once you finish translating, Click on the “save” button
7. Save the language file in the language folder of your WordPress theme
How to change the language of your WordPress Website
After translating the file using the poedit software in your desired language, you have to give proper instruction to your WordPress to fetch your translated language file instead of the default language.
- Go to your WordPress dashboard
- Go to Settings -> General
- In the “Site language” drop-down box, select the translated language of your file.
4. Click on the “save changes” button after selecting the language successfully.
Now you could see the translated version is visible in your website. This is one of the simplest methods to translate WordPress theme in your website.
Summary
Serving humans with the best possible way is the purpose of technology. It is applicable for WordPress also. Translate WordPress theme of your website and make yourself approachable to your customers across the globe. Share this article with your teams and stay tuned to learn more about the dynamic WordPress industry.
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