Multilingual Sites

YOOtheme Pro is multilingual-ready. With its modern language switcher, building multilingual websites in WordPress is easier than ever.

WordPress does not support multilingual sites out of the box. However, there are third-party plugins that add this functionality. Learn more in the official WordPress documentation. YOOtheme Pro supports the following multilingual plugins for WordPress: WPML, Polylang and Falang.

Polylang Language Switcher

To add a language switcher with Polylang, simply create a new Languages menu item in the WordPress menu editor.

The language switcher is just like any other menu item. It inherits all menu location options and has all menu item options, for example, to add a globe icon next to the active language.

The Polylang language switcher menu item has additional layout options. Render the active language as a parent item with a list of all languages as submenu items to show the language switcher together with other menu items. Alternatively, render each language next to each other as top-level menu items, for example, to create a dedicated menu. Optionally, exclude the active language from the language list and more.

WPML Language Switcher

To add a language switcher with WPML, assign a Menu Language Switcher to any existing menu in the WPML plugin settings.

The language switcher in WPML behaves similar to a menu item and can be published as the first or last item in a menu. It inherits all menu location options, but its menu item options, for example, to add a globe icon next to the active language, are located in the Layout → WPML panel of YOOtheme Pro.

The WPML language switcher menu item has additional layout options. Render the active language as a parent item with a list of all languages as submenu items to show the language switcher together with other menu items. Alternatively, render each language next to each other as top-level menu items, for example, to create a dedicated menu. Optionally, exclude the active language from the language list and more.

Translate Pages

Create multiple versions of the page for each language. Use one of the following two options:

• Duplicate the existing page and assign it to the new language. To do so in WPML, use the content override button. For Polylang, use the popular duplicate post plugin.
• Save the existing layout in the YOOtheme Pro layout library. Then create a new empty page, 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.

Translate Widgets

Translating widgets works the same as with pages. Create multiple versions of the widget, assign them to a language and translate them.

Multilingual Footer

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 Widgets and publish them in the bottom position.

Translate Language Strings

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 language/.

Override Language Strings

To override a specific language string without modifying any language files, install and activate the free Loco Translation plugin. All languages strings defined by YOOtheme Pro are listed under Loco Translate → Themes → YOOtheme.

Simply copy the language which should be overridden, for example English (UK), select Custom location and Copy target translations from … option. Learn more in the official Loco translation documentation. Now simply override the needed language strings for the custom language.

As selected, Loco Translation stores custom language overrides in dedicated language files located in the wp-content/languages/loco/themes/ directory, with one file per language. This also makes it possible to manually copy language strings from the YOOtheme Pro language file into an override file. For example, copy strings from wp-content/themes/yootheme/language/yootheme-en_GB.po to wp-content/languages/loco/themes/yootheme-en_GB.po. This approach allows all strings to be translated at once in a code editor. The resulting override file can then be reused by copying it to another WordPress installation.