How to translate the website using WPML plugin?
This article explains the process of translating your website into multiple languages using the WPML plugin.
WPML is a WordPress multilingual plugin to translate WordPress pages, posts, tags, categories, and themes, and it’s compatible with our Pronto theme.
The official documentation explains how to translate a site with their plugin, however, we’ve extended the documentation here to explain better how you can translate the website using our Pronto theme.
Install the required plugins
It is necessary to install the following plugins:
- WPML Multilingual CMS
- WPML String Translation
If you do not have any of the above extensions, purchase them directly from the WPML website.
Once the plugins are installed and activated, you need to access the WPML Multilingual CMS plugin and you will get a setup pop-up.
Below you can see the steps and settings we used during the setup, and we recommend using the same settings, except the language, since you can select any language you need to translate the website into.
We recommend the "Translate What You Choose" option since it offers more flexibility over the translations and you can manually type the translation for a specific language, therefore you can be sure that there are no translations out of context.
If you did not install the "String Translation" plugin, you can do it during the sixth step.
Translate the content
If you followed all of the above setup steps, you can now proceed to translate all the pages, galleries, blog posts, and other post types which require translation.
In order to translate a page, you need to open it, select the language (or the languages, if you selected more during the setup process) you need to translate the page into, click on Duplicate and then update the page to save the changes.
Keep in mind that WPML creates a new directory (duplicate version) of each page in the background and it is where the translated content is stored.
After a page is duplicated, you can switch to the other language directory from the top toolbar, and edit the blocks to translate them manually, then you just need to update the page to save the changes.
When you will access a duplicated page for the first time, you will get the below pop-up, so make sure to check the box to not get that warning again, and click on "Edit anyway".
Once the duplicated page is translated or if you want to simply update the page during the process to save the changes, you will get a one-time pop-up as in the screenshot below, so make sure to click "Ok".
Translate the Header/Footer
After pages and posts were translated, let's proceed with the header and footer translation.
The header and footer blocks are translated the same way as pages are, but first, we need to make sure those blocks can be translated by the WPML plugin. By default, the WPML plugin won't allow duplicating and translating those types of blocks, so we need to access the WPML > Settings panel and under the "Post Types Translation" section, make sure to set the Headers and Footers to translatable, then save the changes.
Once that is done, you should be able to duplicate the header and footer blocks the same way pages are translated.
You just need to access the Flothemes panel, go to the Header or Footer panel and edit the layout you want to translate.
Once you open a specific layout to edit it, in the right sidebar just duplicate the block so then it can be translated, then update the page to save the changes.
Once the header/footer block was duplicated, you can access the other language directory from the top toolbar to translate its content.
In case you need to assign a different navigation menu, you can do that under the Menu Options dropdown as shown below.
However, keep in mind that it is necessary to create another language menu inside the Appearance > Menus panel after translating the pages.
We recommend creating the navigation menu for the other language after the pages are translated (duplicated) because the menu items for the other language are created only after the pages are translated.
At this point, your website should be translated and ready to go live.
We hope this article helps you!