Make theme translatable for WPML

2 comments

1. You don’t have to make anything special for WPML, using the regular translation code should be enough. See I18n for WordPress Developers in the Codex.

   Code preparation

   style.css

   Add Text Domain and Domain Path to your theme’s style.css.

   Example:

   /*
    * Theme Name:    My awesome theme
    * Text Domain:   my_awesome_theme
    * Domain Path:  /languages
    */
   

   Templates

   Find all strings that should be translated and use the Text Domain value with the proper translation functions.

   Example:

   Replace …

   echo 'Comments'
   

   … with …

   esc_html_e( 'Comments', 'my_awesome_theme' );
   

   See wp-includes/l10n.php for available functions, and follwing the links in the Codex article mentioned earlier.

   Theme directory

   Create a directory for translation files from the value of Domain Path.

   Example:

   my-awesome-theme/languages
   

   ---

   Now WPML should be able to find all strings for translation and to create the proper language files.

   Finally, make sure the language file is actually loaded. Add the following code to the functions.php in you theme:

   add_action( 'wp_loaded', 'my_awesome_theme_load_theme_language' );
   
   /**
    * Load translations.
    *
    * @wp-hook wp_loaded
    * @return  bool
    */
   function my_awesome_theme_load_theme_language()
   {
       $lang_dir = get_stylesheet_directory() . '/languages';
       return load_theme_textdomain( 'my_awesome_theme', $lang_dir );
   }
   

2. WPML has a pretty good documentation on how to make a theme compatible.

   Most of the time, all themes should work out of the box with WPML if the theme designer did follow the wp standards for internationalization.

   If you don’t get further with that link and have any concrete problem we can help you with, please add the details of what goes wrong and how you tried to fix it to your question.

Comments are closed.