This document provides an overview of using the Polylang plugin to create multilingual WordPress sites. It discusses what content needs translation, options for translation tools including Polylang, setup of Polylang, managing translated content, and some challenges. Polylang is described as a free, lightweight plugin that allows for creation of linked translations across content and uses .po files for plugin and theme translations. The document provides tips for setup, management of multilingual content, and notes some missing features like options page translation and limitations with many languages.

1. MULTILINGUAL
WORDPRESS WITH
POLYLANG
Teemu Suoranta
16.3.2016
Turku WordPress Meetup

2. Let’s talk about translations
• What kind of things need to be translated?
• What options do you have?
• How to setup Polylang?
• How to manage translations?
• Missing features and problems

3. So you are going to build a
multilingual site…
• Complete vs partially translated sites
• Human vs machine translated sites
• Integrated vs independent sites

4. What needs to be
translated?
• Main content: Pages, posts, categories…
• Plugins
• Widgets: Labels, content and visibility
• Navigations
• Text strings in theme (“Next »”, “Page not found”)
• Admin UI (for translators)

5. Multiple languages will
make everything more
complicated
THE TRUTH

6. Translations from
visitor’s perspective
• UI to change language (flags, list…)
• Content is separated by language
• Show content only in selected language
• Translations are linked: change a language,
go to the translated page
• Automatically detect visitor’s language and
redirect to that language

7. Building multilingual
sites with WordPress

8. Choosing your tools
• WordPress doesn’t really have a built-in solution
to have multiple languages at the same time
• There is a built-in way to translate WordPress,
plugins and theme (.po & .mo)
• There’s no built-in UI to create and
modify .po files
• Doing translations by multi-site or without any
plugin will make you miserable

9. Plugins to the rescue
• Machine translations
• Google Language Translator (≈90k)
• Bing Translator (≈2k)
• Human translations
• Polylang (≈100k)
• WPML (≈400k)
• qTranslate X (≈80k)

10. Introduction to
Polylang

11. Polylang
• Simple, open-source and free multilingual plugin
• Quick setup and easy to use
• Lightweight
• Translated content is saved as separate entries
that are linked by (hidden) language taxonomy
• Translated posts are edited in their own editors

12. Things you need to
translate
• Main content: linked translations and
independent content
• Plugins: uses .po files
• Widgets: Set visibility, translate labels, uses .po
files automatically
• Navigations: translate navigation menus (no sync)

13. Things you need to
translate
• Text strings in theme: Translate in Polylang UI
when strings are registered properly and/or
use .po files
• Admin UI: Users can select their preferred
language (from site’s languages)
• Media: Translatable or language independent
• Slugs: You’ll need this add-on from GitHub

14. Tools for developers
• Example functionality
• Register, translate and retrieve strings
• Get language switcher
• Make translations or link translations in code
• Retrieve posts in language or translated versions
• Full documentation

15. Setup Polylang

16. Install and activate the plugin

17. Go to Setting > Languages and
setup your main language

18. Language added, set content to default language

19. Go to settings tab

20. URL settings
foobargrill.dev/menu
foobargrill.dev/fi/menu
fi.foobargrill.dev/menu
foobargrill.fi/menu

21. Synchronization settings
(copying is not synchronizing!)
(Also decide which custom post types and
taxonomies you want to be translatable)

22. Add more languages (or do it later)

23. Add language switcher
(widget, function or navigation links…)

24. Tips for setup
• Don’t make media translatable (unless you really have to)
• Avoid synchronizing if copying is enough
• Browser language detection might be bad idea if the
main language isn’t English
• If you have used WPML you can import your multilingual
content with WPML to Polylang plugin
• If you import data you can map content to right
languages with WP All Import

25. How to manage
multilingual content

26. Filter content in admin with admin bar
language dropdown

27. Navigate to translations with icons:
plus icon - create new translation
pen icon - edit existing translation
checked icon - original language

28. New meta box in editor screen

29. String translations

30. Lingotek?
• A mysterious tab in Polylang settings
• Premium translation service that can be
integrated to Polylang (with a Lingotek plugin)
• Machine or human translation services can be
bought and delivered through it

31. Tips for management
• Check out Getting Started from Polylang documentation
• It’s easiest to create translation when original post is
complete (all the final meta data is copied)
• Register strings to be translated in Polylang: easy to use
and add new languages
• There’s no perfect system to keep track of changes in
all languages: you need to create habits and do checks
• Test before updating in production (d'oh)

32. Challenges with
Polylang

33. Missing features
• Cant’t translate options pages (including ACF
options pages)
• No built-in slug translation
• Unintuitive media translation (there’s a plugin
though that syncs attachments)
• Doesn’t copy editor content to translation

34. Problems
• UI will get messy if you have many languages
(roughly 10 or more)
• Not as thorough support for WooCommerce as WPML
• You can build working store with Hyyan
WooCommerce Polylang Integration
• Maybe not for super duper complex multilingual stuff
• You might need to consider WPML (or Drupal?)

35. Summary

36. Polylang
• Lightweight, free and open-sourced
• You can setup it without any technical knowledge
and works with most of themes out of the box
• Complete multilingual solution: translate content,
use admin in selected language, use .po files when
available
• Might be clunky when there is loads of languages
or the translation logic is really complex

37. But wait there’s more
• My co-organizer Janne Ala-Äijälä will tell more
advanced stuff on WordCamp Finland 2016
• Subject: Leveling up your Multilingual
WordPress Site
• More about workflow, weird characters, RTL
support, translation performance…

38. Thank you!
• I’m Teemu Suoranta, web developer from Aucor
and organizer of Turku WordPress Meetup
• You can follow me on Twitter @TeemuSuoranta
• I like to hear your horror stories from WPML