Launching and running a WooCommerce store requires dedication and hard work. Your entrepreneurial skills go through various tests throughout the lifecycle of the business.
Once your business becomes well-established and builds a good reputation, you start making stable and handsome profits. But, somewhere down the line, you may fall short of ways to expand your business. What do you do then? Maybe it is time to expand your company internationally.
One of the important steps in going global and attracting customers worldwide would be translating your online store into different foreign languages. Multilingual websites make it seamless for native readers to understand your website properly and buy products or avail of the services.
Here are two of the best methods you can follow to translate your store.
Method 1: Using TranslatePress
TranslatePress is a widely popular translation plugin for WordPress. It allows you to translate the text on your website through a point-and-click interface.
- Install and activate the TranslatePress plugin
- Install and activate the ‘Extra Languages’ add-on for TranslatePress. (You can download this from the TranslatePress account)
- Navigate to the Settings > TranslatePress page in your WordPress admin and click on the ‘License’ tab to enter the license key.
- You’ll find your license key in your account area on the TranslatePress website. You need to simply copy and paste the key into the box.
- Click on the ‘Activate License’ button.
- Next, click the ‘General’ tab and check if your default language is set correctly.
- Choose the language/s you want to use for your store.
- You can add language(s) by selecting them from the dropdown list under the ‘All Languages’ section and clicking on the ‘Add’ button next to it.
(Now that you’re done configuring basic plugin settings, let’s begin translating WooCommerce)
- Click on the ‘Translate Site’ tab in the WordPress admin bar for launching the translation editor.
(The translation editor will show your website’s live preview to the right and you can find the translation panel on the left)
- In the preview panel, you can visit any page on your website, and then hover the mouse over the text you want to translate. You’ll find a blue pencil icon appear. Click on it to start editing.
- Simply type the translations for the text in the left panel. You can do this for all the languages of your website.
- Once you’re done, click on the ‘Save translation’ button at the top of your screen.
- Now, go to your site to see the translated text. Click on the language switcher and change that to your desired language.
(Any text created automatically by your plugins and WordPress should be translated automatically)
- Carry on translating the rest of your WooCommerce product page(s) or your website’s content in the translation editor.
Method 2: Using WPML
The WPML plugin is a popular translation plugin with an easy and simple interface. It allows you to connect your website to third-party translation providers and provides automatic machine translation.
- On the WPML website, sign up for an account (You will need a multilingual CMS plan to translate WooCommerce).
- Install and activate the WPML plugin.
- Upon activation, click on the ‘Register Now’ link (You’ll find this on the plugins page).
- Enter your site key (You will see this under your account on the WPML website).
With WPML installed, you’ll see a ‘Commercial’ tab on the Plugins > Add New page in your WordPress dashboard. Click on it and you’ll see a list of available WPML extensions and add-ons you could need. The important ones to translate your WooCommerce site are:
- String Translation
- Translation Management
- Media Translation
- WooCommerce Multilingual
Check for these 4 plugins in the list under the new ‘Commercial’ tab.
- Scroll down and check the ‘Activate after download’ box.
- Go ahead and click on the ‘Download’ button.
Now, your plugins will be automatically downloaded, installed, and activated, and you should now see an ‘Operation complete’ message.
- Go to WPML > Languages page in your WordPress admin and you will see WPML setup options.
- Select the language for your existing content and click on the Next button.
- Now you need to choose the languages you want to enable for your website by checking the boxes next to them. These options will be shown on your website in the language switcher.
- You can either add the language switcher to your navigation menu or add it to the footer area or a widget of your website.
- Now, you’d have the option to include a link to translations at the bottom or top of the content. If you enable the option, you can preview the links and see how they will appear.
- By default, you’ll see the ‘This post is also available in,’ option. However, this option will appear on your site’s product pages besides blog posts, which is why it is recommended to change it to something like ‘This content is also available in’ or something similar.
- Click on the ‘Next’ button to move ahead.
- WPML will then ask you if you want to send the plugin and themes-related information to WPML.org. (This can help you pace up things if you need support).
- Enter the site key if you did not do it before. And if you did, click on the ‘Next’ button.
- You’ll see some suggestions for other components to install. (You can install and activate extra WPML plugins here)
- Click the ‘Skip and Finish’ link for closing the setup wizard.
(You’d now see the WooCommerce Multilingual setup wizard)
- Click on the ‘Let’s continue’ button to begin setting up your online store translations.
- You’ll be prompted to create the missing translations for your store’s pages. Herein, leave the ‘Create missing translations’ box checked and click the ‘Continue’ button.
- Again, on the ‘Global Attributes’ tab, click the ‘Continue’ button (Check the ‘Enable the multi-currency mode’ before you click the Continue button if you want to enable multiple currencies).
- Under ‘Translation Options,’ you’ll be asked if you want to showcase the products even if they aren’t translated. Choose an appropriate option for yourself and click on the ‘Continue’ button.
- Go ahead and click on the ‘Close setup’ button.
- In your WordPress admin, navigate to WooCommerce » WooCommerce Multilingual tab.
- You’ll see the list of your products in the product table. There’ll be a new column showing the languages you selected while setting up WPML.
- Now, to translate the page, click the ‘+’ icon for your selected language. You’ll then see the product translation screen.
- You can simply type in the translated text or copy the fields from the original. (Below this, you can translate text for the product)
- Once you’re done with the translation, scroll to the page’s bottom. Here, check the ‘Translation is complete’ box and click on the ‘Save & Close’ button.
- Now, you’ll again see your list of products. The + icon for your translated language and product would now be a pencil icon. You can click on this if you want to edit the translation.
- Now, you can translate your product(s) into other languages in a similar way.
- To add the image(s) to your translated pages, navigate to WPML » Media Translation page on your WordPress admin. Then, click on the ‘+’ icon for your selected image.
- You’ll see a popup where you need to enter the name for the image. You can even select a different image for the translated version.
- Once done, click the ‘Save media translation’ button.
- To translate the product categories, click on the ‘Categories’ tab and translate them in a similar way as your products.
- Once you have translated your products, the users can easily view them in their own language on your website. WPML will translate the WordPress-generated text automatically, like ‘Add to cart’ into the user’s language, too.
And it’s done.
You can use any of the above two methods to translate your WooCommerce store into different languages.
Hope this article was insightful to you.
