TABLE OF CONTENT
- Chose languages
- Strings translations
- Switching from one language to another in the back office
- Translating a page
1, 2, 3 and more languages: Ariane is compatible with the many WordPress plugins that allow translation and management of pages in several languages.
Chose languages
When the plugin is installed (for example, Polylang or WPML), you can select the different languages you want in the dedicated menu: left bar, bottom.
In this tab you choose a language among all the possible ones, can rename it if needed, choose a flag for it, specify its reading direction.
In the language settings, you can also choose what will be translatable or not in your site:
- the taxonomies of your content, if so and for which content(s)
- the media
- the URLs
- …
Strings translations
It is also in this parameter tab that the "strings translations" are done.
The strings are all the words and phrases present on the site but whose content is not managed in the blocks.
This, for example (titled in the footer) :
On some sites there are few such texts; sometimes there are hundreds.
Switching from one language to another in the back office
When content is available in several languages, ease of use sometimes requires displaying only the content of one or the other. You can therefore choose which language is displayed or view all of them via the button in the top bar:
Translating a page
Once the languages have been chosen and set up, it is time to move on to the actual translation of your content.
In the list of your pages (or any other type of content for that matter, be it posts, Custom Post Types, etc.), the language information is indicated by the small flags to the right of the line :
- the flag in the line indicates the language of the page in question (here the page is in French)
- the "+" indicates that the version in another language is not yet done, the page is to be translated
- the pencil indicates that the version in another language exists (and can therefore be edited)
In a page, the language settings and information are at the bottom right.
Here for example, the page is in French.
Before doing anything, save your page as a precaution.
To translate it into English, click on the "+" next to the English flag.
You will arrive on a new, completely blank page, which you name.
At this point you can choose :
- either copy and paste the page in French to have an identical structure in English (see the chapter of this guide which explains the manipulation - "Copy and paste pages")
- or create a new page in English from scratch with its own blocks, content, visuals, etc.
→ you will then have to translate field by field in each block
Once your page is finished, save it.
On this new page, you can see that it is linked to its other language versions: the titles of the other versions appear in the fields next to their respective flags.
You can also navigate from one version to another by clicking on the pencil next to the flag.
The language selection menu in the frontend (appearance according to the validated design) only allows you to switch from one language to another for a page, if the translation of this page exists.
Some languages require more characters than others, and this can affect the aesthetics of a title, a button or a menu. This is even more true if one of your languages has ideograms or reads from left to right.
If this is a key issue for you, you can also ask for a design per language - that way you can be sure that it is suitable