Our WordPress themes and plugins are localized using the GNU gettext framework and are ready for translation. This is the way to translate themes, plugins, and WordPress core.

All our plugins and themes include an extra language file with the file ending .pot which you can use to translate the plugin or theme. The .pot file is basically a list of all the text strings used throughout the plugin and theme files in the English language.

In addition, our plugins and themes include .po and .mo files for different languages. These files are created from the .pot file and contain both the original language, which is English and the translated strings.

Each of the .po and .mo files is named according to their language codes (es_ES.po for Spanish, fr_FR.po for French, and it_IT.po for Italian etc.). The .po files are compiled to binary .mo files, which gives faster access to the strings at run-time. WordPress uses the .mo files to load the language.

For the translation of our themes and plugins, we use GlotPress. GlotPress is a collaborative, web-based software translation tool. Using GlotPress for our translations allows our community of customers to contribute with translations. You can create an account, log in to translate.righthere.com and help with translating projects and suggest corrections.

Download Translations

If you need translation files for your website’s theme or plugins you can export the current translation files in the .po and .mo format and upload the files to the language folder using FTP.

For themes: wp-content/themes/[theme name]/languages/
For plugins: wp-content/plugins/[plugin name]/languages/

If you are concerned about overwriting your custom translations when you update your theme or plugin you can place your .po and .mo files in the following folders:

For themes: wp-content/languages/themes/
For plugins: wp-content/languages/plugins/

WordPress will first look in the wp-content/languages/ folder, and if it doesn’t find any translation files, it will secondly look in the local languages folder for the plugin or theme.

Become a Translation Validator

If you have experience with translating you can become a validator for a language. Just provide a bit of information about your experience, and we will get you added as a translation validator on our GlotPress portal.