Multilingual Sites
Create multilingual sites with Joomla and YOOtheme Pro.
To create a multilingual site just install the needed languages in Joomla. Duplicate and translate articles and modules and assign them to a specific language. Joomla will switch between these content translations. Alternatively, install Falang or other multilingual extension which will switch between content translations. If some content is missing for a language, the assigned article or module of the default language will be shown. Learn more in the official Joomla documentation.
The following will give a short overview about creating multilingual sites and the YOOtheme Pro specifics.
First, create multiple versions of the page for each language. Use one of the following two options:
- Duplicate the existing article and assign it to the new language.
- Save the existing layout in the YOOtheme Pro layout library. Then create a new empty article, assign it to a language and import the saved layout from the library.
Assign each page to a language and translate it. Make sure to have one version for each language.
Note At the moment, the content fields are not extracted and cannot be translated separately from the page builder settings. This means if you change the settings in the page builder, you have to change them for every translation. That's why it's recommended to translate pages in the final step. We hope to have a better solution in the future. The only exception is Falang where content fields can be translated on the same page.
Translating modules works the same as with pages. Create multiple versions of the module, assign them to a language and translate them.
YOOtheme Pro integrates the concept of menu positions in Joomla. However, these menu positions cannot be used for multilingual sites. Instead, just use Menu modules and publish them in the navbar, dialog, navbar-mobile or dialog-mobile position.
YOOtheme Pro provides the footer builder to add a footer to all pages. However, the footer builder cannot be used for multilingual sites. Instead, just use Builder Modules and publish them in the bottom position.
YOOtheme Pro uses multiple language strings within its templates. For example, the read more link shows the text Continue Reading. YOOtheme Pro is translated into more than 20 languages, and each of these language files contains translations of the language strings. To help translate YOOtheme Pro to your language, refer to the translation documentation.
The language files can be found in the YOOtheme theme folder in languages/.
In Joomla, you can easily override a specific language string without modifying any language files. Overrides can be created and managed in Extensions → Language(s) → Overrides. Learn more in the official Joomla documentation.
To find all language strings defined by YOOtheme Pro, just search for the TPL_YOOTHEME constant.
Alternatively, you can override language strings manually by copying them from a YOOtheme Pro language file, e.g. templates/yootheme/languages/en-GB/en-GB.tpl_yootheme.ini, to the Joomla overrides file, e.g. languages/overrides/en-GB.override.ini.
Apart from the predefined YOOtheme Pro language strings, you can create new language strings yourself. This allows you to translate any custom content within YOOtheme Pro, for instance, the logo text, the cookie banner or the newsletter messages.
Here is a short example on how to translate the logo text:
- Enter the language constant
TPL_YOOTHEME_LOGO_TEXT to the Logo Text field. The language constant needs to be uppercase and without spaces.
- Search for this constant in Extensions → Language(s) → Overrides and translate it for all your languages.
