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 product. 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 all elements on our themes.

Install Required Plugins

It is necessary to install the following plugins:

• WPML Multilingual CMS
• WPML String Translation
• WPML Translation Management

If you do not have any of the above extensions, purchase them directly from WPML.

Choose your Languages

For the setup of the WPML, you need to follow some steps – see the tutorial here explaining how to get started with WPML and choose the language.

Translate your Content

Then proceed to translate all the pages, galleries, blog posts, and other post types which require translation.

Most of the predefined blocks will be translated automatically if the automatic-translation option was selected during the initial setup steps, but in terms of the Flex blocks, those need to be translated manually as currently, the WPML plugin cannot read the Flex blocks since Flex technology is built differently from themes based on ACF functionality. However, the process is not too complex and it offers more flexibility over the translations as you can manually type the translation for a specific language, therefore you can be sure that there some translations are not out of the context.

Keep in mind that WPML creates a duplicate version of each page in the background and it is where the content is translated. In this case, to translate the Flex blocks, it is necessary to switch to the other language website than the main one and just open the Flex blocks on each page to translate them manually. In other words, the translation is done manually by rewriting the text in the other language you need to showcase the website.

Translate the Menu

After pages and posts were translated, proceed with the Menu translation. Check out the tutorial on how to do so here.

Translating Strings

You will also want to find any “strings” that are items you cannot translate directly from the theme settings (i.e. CTA buttons, specific parts of some predefined blocks). To do so, it is necessary to look for any corresponding “strings” (words or sentences) in the options in WPML > String Translations, do a search for the word or sentence you want to translate, then edit it.

Once the strings are translated, your site should be fully ready in your corresponding language.

We hope it helps!