How to Translate Your WordPress Website with Loco Translation Plugin

The problem of translating a site into other languages is relevant for most WordPress administrators. Very often it is necessary to provide users with at least two language versions of the site, and most WordPress themes and plugins are issued in English by default. Fortunately, the WordPress platform provides a wide variety of solutions for translating text content and even the inner content of the admin panel to other languages.

Loco Translate plugin is one of the free tools for translating all the elements of your site. With it, any WordPress administrator can access all the text elements that need translation. To translate, you do not need to have special knowledge or skills in web development to extract the necessary text content from the corresponding lines of the system code.

This plugin is extremely easy to use, so it is best for beginners in the area of WordPress administration. Today we will try to show in detail all the features and capabilities of the Loco Translate plugin, so you can decide on the need to install this tool for your site or blog.

The First Introduction to Loco Translate

Download and install the Loco Translate plugin is extremely simple: just go to the Plugins tab of your admin’s WordPress toolbar, click the Add New button and search for the word “Loco”. In the search results, you will immediately be prompted to install the plugin, and then activate it at the click of a button. If everything went right, then in the sidebar of your WordPress admin panel will appear a special menu for the Loco Translate plugin.

Overview of Loco Translate Settings

Loco Translate has only 5 tabs in its interface: Home, Themes, Plugins, WordPress and Settings. On the main tab Home you will be offered an overview of all available themes and plugins for translation. This way you get quick access to the basic functionality of the Themes and Plugins tabs and the ability to quickly jump to them.

When you go to the Themes or Plugins menu and click on a specific object, you will see a list of languages available for translation and the level of translated text content in the translation. If the score is 100%, you can use the Loco Translate data to automatically create the appropriate language version of the theme or plugin.

Here you can also add any new language and start a separate translation of the theme or plugin. In this case, Loco Translate will provide you with a list of all the text content for the lines that need translation. You do not need to search for menu items on the site or other interface elements in the code. You can focus directly on translating all the necessary text elements of the site.

Here you will also have two additional tabs – Setup and Advanced. These tabs provide advanced functionality for developers and experienced WordPress administrators. One of the important features of these tabs is the ability to download versions of translations via XML files and edit them through the administrator panel.

WordPress tab provides the ability to translate the core of your site into any language. Here you will also be presented with a list of available language versions that are available for use and their readiness level in percentages. You can create new templates for language versions and new languages for translating WordPress content. Editing of existing language versions is also available from this tab of Loco Translate.

Setting tab allows you to set up access to translation for different user roles, and add a specific user as an interpreter by specifying his email address. Here you can also find more fine-tune settings for developers, such as extracting strings and saving PO/POT files options.

How Does Loco Translate Work

Let us look at an example translation for a better understanding of the principle of the Loco Translate plugin. The following screenshot shows an example of a ready-made language version for a site that you can edit manually:

On the Editor tab you can see all the text strings of the site interface that need translation. You can see a table with two columns, where the first column contains the original text content (usually in English), and the second column provides the current version of the translation. If the second column is empty for certain rows, then this content is not currently translated.

You can edit the contents of any row in this table. To do this, click on the row you need and change the contents in the fields below the table. Here you can change both the source and the translated version. Do not forget to click the Save button for the changes to take effect on the site.

You could also notice the Sync, Revert and Fuzzy buttons at the top of the spreadsheet interface with the translation. The Sync button performs a manual synchronization check with the current version of the translation in the Loco Translate plugin. The Revert button cancels the changes one step at a time – one change per click. The Fuzzy button allows you to save the translation results to the cloud data store of the plugin. Additional PO and MO buttons allow you to download the translation to a file for use on other your WordPress projects.

The Filter Translation field is a built-in search for existing lines of source and translated content. This feature will be useful in the case when you need to fix only a specific line in the translation. With the help of additional buttons you can also enable and disable the display of non-printable characters in text content and toggle code view.

The Source tab provides access to the text content in the php file. This feature can be useful for WordPress developers. The File Info tab provides service information about the file containing the translation version: the last modification date, the translation progress in percent, the status of the synchronization with the template, and more. The Delete tab allows you to completely get rid of the selected version of the translation.

Areas of Application for Loco Translate

Loco Translate plugin is relevant for most modern WordPress themes and plugins. Even premium WordPress products do not always have all the necessary language versions, and Loco Translate helps you quickly and conveniently create a translation and adapt all text content of your website or blog to a specific language.

One of the striking examples of Loco Translate`s importance is OnionBuzz Viral and Buzz Quiz plugin. Creating quizzes with this plugin is as simple as possible even for novice WordPress administrators. However, the plugin interface is not translated into different languages. If you want to create exciting quizzes for your users in their native language, then Loco Translate will provide you with a convenient opportunity to achieve this goal.

There are a huge number of similar examples – not only with WordPress plugins, but also themes. Now you can choose the themes and plugins you like without looking at the existing language versions, because Loco Translate can easily adapt them to any of the needed ones for your website.