How to Translate Themes and Plugins using Poedit

Poedit is a software that you can use to translate themes and plugins to your preferred local language. This is available for Windows, Mac & Linux users and can be downloaded from poedit.net. This software has a Pro version, but the free version should be sufficient for you to do the translation.

You can use Poedit for any RTL language as well as Hindi.

Before translating, you will need the following:

• Poedit software
• The .pot file of your theme or plugin - You can get this from the .zip file of the theme or plugin downloaded from the Purchase History of your account; it's usually found in the language folder.

Once you have both, follow the instructions below.

1. Open the Poedit >> Create new translation

2. Locate the .pot file in the folder of the theme/plugin you want to translate.

3. Choose the target language of your translation.

Note: WordPress uses a language code for every language there is. Your translation needs to follow this, or otherwise it won't work. For the list of the language codes used by WordPress, please click this LINK.

4. Once the target language have been properly selected, you can now begin the translation.

Once done, remember to click File >> Save As

5. Make sure that you saved the file in the correct format.

The format should be: theme-text-domain-language_code.

For example: brook-it_IT for translating Brook to Italian.

The text domain of any theme (if it's translatable) can be found in the style.css file of that theme:

The text domain of any plugin(if it's translatable) can be found in the main plugin file(usually named the same as the plugin itself):

Once you click save PoEdit will automatically generate .po and .mo files for you.

Upload these two files in this location by accessing your site via FTP or your hosting file manager program, once connected go to wp-content/languages/themes (when dealing with themes) or wp-content/languages/plugins (when dealing with plugin translation).

If you do not have this languages folder in your wp-content folder then simply create it.

6. Change the local language in WordPress.

Once you have added the .po and .mo files to the said location, go to your WordPress Dashboard >> Settings >> General

Under Site Language, change it to the same language as your Poedit translation.

Check and test your site to see if it's working.