First off, you have to know that not all WordPress plugins can be translated. The plugin developer(s) had to take the necessary steps such as using the WordPress __() and _e() functions and load_plugin_textdomain() in order to parse the strings/text of the plugin through the localization system.
If you have a plugin with the ability of being translated, this tutorial will guide you through the steps of translating the plugin using an application called poEdit with screenshots taken on the Macintosh operating system. poEdit is available for Windows and Linux users as well though.
Before we get started, you’ll need to obtain poEdit from the poEdit website. It is a free and has been released under an MIT license, which allows you to download, edit and redistribute the source code as long as the original license information is kept intact.
I am going to translate the WordPress Mailing List plugin. I have my plugin folder ready for use, placed on my desktop where it is easily accessible. I will now open poEdit and go to “File” > “New Catalog…” to create a new catalog file for this plugin.
The moment I click “New Catalog…”, the application displays a dialog window with three (3) tabs at the top. The first tab is called “Project Info”. The only mandatory field is the “Project Name”, though you can fill all of them in if you want to.
The second tab is called “Paths” and gives you the ability to specify the base path and other paths to the PHP files which need to be translated. In this tutorial, I’m going to place the catalog file directly into the plugin folder, so I’m using a dot “.” for the “Base Path” field and I create a new path item and fill in a dot “.” as well. See the screenshot below.
The third and last tab is called “Keywords”. It has a blank, white area and some buttons to the top-right. The second button from the left allows you to create new keyword items. Create two keyword items. The first one is a double underscore “__” and the second item is underscore and the letter E (in lowercase) “_e”.
When you are done with this, simply click “Ok”. The poEdit application will now open a new dialog prompting where you would like to save the .PO file. Navigate to the plugin folder, type in the desired name for the catalog file and save it inside of the plugin folder.
Save the catalog file by hitting the “Save” button. Next up, the poEdit application will immediately start a scan which will scan through each and every one of the PHP files inside the directory based on the details you filled in the “Paths” section in the “Project Info” dialog before. When it is done scanning, it will display all the translatable strings/text and show you how many there are as well.
Now click “Ok” and you can start translating the available strings. For each string you click on, the application will display the original text in a box and provide you with another text area where you can type the translation.
With all the strings translated according to your preference, save the catalog file inside of the plugin folder and upload it together with the rest of the plugin files to your WordPress installation. WordPress should automatically load the language file when the plugin is loaded and in case it does not do that, you might need to open up your “wp-config.php” file and set the WPLANG constant to the appropriate language.
All the best of luck!
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July 24th, 2009 at 4:52 am
Thank you for that good tutorial!
August 1st, 2009 at 11:28 am
Found this site by another article, but this post will help me a lot, and i want to thank you, sounds easy to follow instructions, hope dont have any problems to make it work, i will test it under ubuntu 7.10, whe its done back to post the results.
Thank you.
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:04 am
I really liked ur guidance. Thanks for the help
August 12th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
great find on poedit and great post with easy to follow directions, thanks. let me try this method on some of my sites.
August 17th, 2009 at 8:07 am
this is quite easy to follow, I think I might try to build upon it a little in my next post
August 18th, 2009 at 1:54 am
thanks very useful article.
August 23rd, 2009 at 1:29 am
Indeed a useful tutorial,i’ve needed to translate some plugins few days ago but i didn’t found any good software.
August 24th, 2009 at 2:40 am
I’m not sure whether to go with drupal or to stick with wordpress?
The plugins for both platforms seem to both be pretty good.
August 24th, 2009 at 3:19 am
I definitely recommend & suggest WordPress rather than Drupal. I could give you several valid and reasonable reasons.
August 25th, 2009 at 9:30 am
this is quite easy to follow, I think I might try to build upon it a little in my next post
August 25th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
I would say wordpress too, I think that from a future proof perspective you are safer and the community around it seems more helpful
August 26th, 2009 at 2:30 am
Thanks for the help on ecommerce and the plugin tutorial.
Internet Marketing Alternatives
August 26th, 2009 at 5:44 am
thank you for this post.this article is very useful finally, this site is very good.
August 26th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
great find on poedit and great post with easy to follow directions, thanks. let me try this method on some of my sites.
August 28th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Yes wordpress i wouldd say is better than drupal, but i think it down to preference really.
August 29th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Gotta Love WordPress!!!
Thanks For The Great Tutorial!
September 4th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Thanks a lot for this very helpful tutorial. I was not familiar with poEdit, but it really looks like a very handy piece of software.
September 4th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Thanks let me try this method on some of my sites.
September 4th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Excellent walk trough of how to handle translation proces in poedit. very helpful.
September 9th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Thank you for that tutorial!
Nikita Narvov INC.
September 10th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
thanks for super tutorial
September 15th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
I would say wordpress is netter than dupal, but again it is really down to preference.
Ewan
September 15th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
I really needed this walk-through for this plugin. I was completely lost great article.
September 21st, 2009 at 1:14 am
This was very helpful, I must try this method soon.
September 27th, 2009 at 6:24 am
Best WP.
Thanks.
October 4th, 2009 at 3:40 am
Am I going to complain about being typecast as smart? I don’t think so.
October 4th, 2009 at 10:43 am
This article is a really useful tutorial. Thankyou so much for the valuable information i love learning what wordpress can do.
October 10th, 2009 at 10:06 am
Fantastic tutorial. I never knew you could translate a plugin. I have a couple I need to work on. Thank you for the great article.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:42 am
What a very helpful tutorial, I have learnt a lot about wordpress lately and found your site to be very helpful indeed.
November 17th, 2009 at 2:00 am
I feel we can always request for a translation at the plugins page so that the developer translates and give us the plugin. Isn’t it?
November 29th, 2009 at 8:33 am
Thanks! finally we can translate some plugins with your help. great work!
December 19th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
I think WordPress is better than Drupal. The sheer number of WordPress plugins and templates available make it such a great CMS platform to work with. This tutorial is very helpful by the way, thanks for the walk-through.
March 29th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
WordPress is great, dupal is also great too.
April 5th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
Good plugin. Have a site translated into several languages is very important to access large amounts of visitors and potential customers.
April 8th, 2010 at 4:27 pm
Drupal I have know got used to and it is soooo much better.
April 11th, 2010 at 11:31 am
WordPress is very easy to work with I think it is the best to be honest
May 20th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
For me, the best operating system is Linux because it rarely hangs..~*
June 24th, 2010 at 7:35 am
Thanks for this great post, I was looking for something like this before but as I found your article, I was able to translate a personalized plugin in seconds
Thanks again, you did a great job!
September 12th, 2010 at 8:15 am
Extremely good post and actually aids with becoming familiar with the subject much better.
October 13th, 2010 at 4:22 am
the best operating system is always Linux, after Linux it is Windows XP. Vista sucks–’
December 20th, 2010 at 2:36 pm
there are many different operating systems but of course i would still prefer to use linux for stability ~*”
January 21st, 2011 at 12:30 pm
WOW! a little hard for me but I guess, I’ll be able to do it once I re-read the instructions you gave… In other words, I’m LOST IN CODE .. LOL
Anyways thanks!
April 4th, 2011 at 1:01 pm
Yes, great tuts, but i still don’t get the thing with the PATH.
Anything i try gets me 3 lines of errors upon saving the initial .po file right into the plugin or theme main folder, using nothing but . as you suggest here for both paths.
The errors are:
PoEdit can’t find any files in the folder
Catalog entries maybe invalid (haha)
The third one is actually just a repeat of the error message without viewing the details, (kind of semi-good this program…)
saying Actualization failed – what the crikey is wrong??
P.S. your social networks buttons are at a dumb place for posting comments!
April 4th, 2011 at 1:29 pm
ok, i let you all know how this stuff with the paths actually works!
Inside Base Path goes an actual full path like
C:\mydrive\mywebsitefolder\mywordpresspluginortheme
Inside the New Path goes only a dot!
.
That works, what a drag through endless Google searches where nobody could point this out in plain and simple terms!
But, still one more trouble – it seems that this only fetches the PHP files inside this folder, what if there is another folder that contains additional PHP files that need translations, how do i add those to the ones from the main folder please??
November 14th, 2011 at 10:57 am
Hello, I want to use this tutorial and translate my facebook like button, but I am missing a fisrt point.How Poedit will recognize that I am willing to translate facebook button? Sorry for such a question but I use WB for a week. Can you provide me hint of this pls?
November 14th, 2011 at 11:01 am
Hello.I want to translate facebook button and would like to ask how Poedit will recognize that I want to translate it…sorry for such a question I am in WP for 1 week.
Could you provide me with a hint?
December 1st, 2011 at 2:56 am
Hey thanks for the easy tutorial. This is just the solution I need but I’m having trouble getting the plugin to actually display the translated words. I’m using MarketPress on my MAMP server on my home machine for a development project and it’s not happening for me. Any insight would be appreciated.
Thanks!
April 15th, 2012 at 4:44 pm
Thank you, help a lot!