Translating Static Strings

How to Translate Static Strings Properly?

Here is a short visualization of how to deal with string translations:

Static Strings Translation Process

Translating the theme alone is not sufficient; you must also follow this process to translate the bundled plugins. If the bundled plugins are not translated, some words on your site will remain untranslated.

Install Loco Translate

The easiest way to translate the theme is by using the Loco Translate plugin.

Loco Translate is a plugin that allows you to translate your website's content into one language at a time, making it useful for single-language sites. It can not create multilingual websites!

Use WPML or other related plugins to create multilingual websites.

Loco Translate is a free plugin that can be installed from WordPress's default repository.

1. In the WordPress dashboard go to Plugins>Add New Plugin:

Adding New Plugin from WordPress Dashboard

1. On the opened page, search for Loco Translate, then install and activate it.

Installing Loco Translate

Change The Website and WordPress Language

When you change the website and/or WordPress language, the Motor Theme and bundled plugins' interface (plugin's static strings) will also change, as long as it has been translated into your chosen language.

Change the site Language

1. Open the general settings from the WordPress dashboard: Settings > General:

General tab of the WordPress Settings

1. Find the Site Language setting and select the language according to your needs:

Site Language setting in the General Settings of the website

1. Save the changes:

Saving the changes

Change the WordPress (including plugins) Language

1. Go to Edit Profile on the upper-right corner:

Editing Profile

Alternatively, you can also follow WordPress Dashboard > Users > Profile:

Editing Profile

1. Find the Language setting then choose the one according to your needs:

Profile Language

1. Update the profile settings:

Update Profile

Creating the Translation File

1. Open the Loco Translate by following WP Dashboard > Loco Translate > Motors Theme:

In this page you can see the Motors Theme and the list of other bundled plugins. With the help of Loco Translate you can translate any of them.

But in this documentation we will focus theme translation.

Translating the theme alone is not sufficient; you must also follow this process to translate the bundled plugins. If the bundled plugins are not translated, some words on your site will remain untranslated.

1. On the opened page you can see the list of translated languages. You can edit any of them according to your needs. But now, we gonna learn how to create a new language. So Click on the New Language Button:

Creating New Language

If you find the language you need in the list, you can freely edit it. There is no need to create it again.

1. Select the language that you want to translate to. In case there is no needed language in the list, you can freely use the Custom Language option. Choose the last option (languages/themes/motors-en_US.po) as the location:

for plugins languages/plugins/... as the location;

Creating a new language

After clicking the Start Translation button, you will be directed to the Loco Translate editor where you can start translating the plugin strings.

IMPORTANT

It is required to store the translation file in “.../wp-content/languages/themes/” folder to keep translation during the theme updates. So, proceed it carefully.

Translation Process

The translation process is straightforward. Just write the translation to the designated area and save the changes:

Main Translation Page of the Loco Translate

If you cannot find the string that you wanted from the Motors theme, please kindly search for it from bundled plugins that come with the Motors theme.

Some words may start with special symbols like %s, %d, or &ab - these are variables. They can represent anything: a name, number, size, or date. You need to determine what they are from the context.

Do NOT translate them. You can only change the order of them in the sentence.

For instance:

	Source text	Translation (Spanish)
Loco Translate	%s commented - "%d" on listing %m	%s comentó - "%d" en el listado %m
On the website	Jane commented - "Nice car" on listing BMW X7	Jane comentó - "Nice Car" en el listado BMW X7

Example

Let's change the text inside the 'TRADE IN FORM' button. We will change it to 'TRADE IN (LOCO)' just for testing.

Trade in Form button in the Single Listing Page

1. Search for 'Trade in form' and write 'Trade in (LOCO)' to the translation and save the changes:

Translating Trade in Form text

That's it ✅, here is the result:

Trade in Form button in the Single Listing Page after translation

Using this process you can change any static strings in Motors Theme and bundled plugins.

Update Translation File

Stylemixthemes cares about its clients, so we continuously add new and colorful features to our themes and plugins to improve them. That's why it's important to keep your themes and plugins up to date. During updates, new strings will be added or removed.

After updating the plugin, you also need to synchronize it in the Loco Translate plugin.

1. Follow WP Dashboard > Loco Translate > Themes > Motors and click on the Edit Template button:

Motors Theme page in the Loco Translate Plugin

1. Click on the Sync button to start synchronization:

Synchronization

1. You can see what kind of changes were made. Click on the Save button:

Info message shows what changes were made, saving the changes