How to change the language for WordPress?

This article guides you on how to change the language for your WordPress.

WordPress language support :

Known as the most widely used blogging platform, WordPress is utilized all over the world. Owing to its enormous popularity, it is multilingual. Adding a personal touch to their site allows bloggers who prefer to speak in their native tongues. WordPress comes with English as its default language, but you can install other languages on it in a few different ways:

1) Softaculous: Softaculous allows you to select your preferred language during the installation of WordPress.

2) Manual Installation: It is possible that Softaculous is not included in your account or that it does not have the language you require. Alternatively, you might choose to add a language to an already-existing WordPress website. In each of these cases, changing the WordPress language requires manually installing a language file.

3) Plugin: An alternate method to the manual installation process, you can also use a plugin to change the WordPress language.

# Steps to change the WordPress language manually :

You must first obtain the translation file (or files) for your desired language in order to manually change the WordPress language. After that, upload them to your WordPress website and adjust a few parameters. To do this, take the following actions:

1. Through web browser to go https://translate.wordpress.org/. On this page, you can see WordPress languages and locales. Make use of the values in the Language code column to find out the code for the language that you want to use.

2. Again from browser go to https://i18n.svn.wordpress.org. This site is the source of repository for all the WordPress language files. Now use the language code that you have obtained in step 1 to determine which directory contains the files for the language that you want to use.

3. Click on the language code ( like fr_BE) to see the directory contents, and then click on the tags directory.

4. This step is different for each language. The tag directory has directories of several WordPress versions. You can start with the most recent version number, and look for the messages subdirectory. In-case the message directory doesn’t exist, move to the previous version until you find it.

5. In the directory of messages, download the .mo language file or files to your local computer.

(Depending on the language, there can be one .mo file or multiple .mo files. Also, you won’t need any of the .po source files unless you plan to modify the translations by yourself.)

6. Upload this .mo file or files to the wp_content/languages directory of your WordPress site.

7. Enabling a new language in the WordPress settings :

(i) For WordPress version 4.0 or newer, log in to the WordPress administrator interface.

Click on Settings, and then on General.

In the Site Language list box, select the language that you want WordPress to use, and then click on Save Changes.

(ii) For the WordPress version 3.9.2 or older, open the wp-config.php file in your preferred text editor. Identify the following line and replace xx_YY with the language and local code (this code should match with the language code directory name that you have used in Step 3) :

define ( ‘WPLANG’ , ‘xx_YY’);

Now save the changes to the wp-config.php file.

8. See the WordPress site in your browser. WordPress will display text using the new language.

# Steps to change WordPress language using plugin :

If you think installing WordPress language manually is not interesting, then there are several WordPress plugins available that can simplify the process for you. The most popular plugin is WordPress Language.
This plugin will automatically download and install the correct language files and enables you to switch quickly and easily between languages.

Perform the following steps to install and configure the WordPress Language plugin :

(i) As an administrator login to a WordPress site.

(ii) Click on Plugins present on the left-hand side of the panel.

(iii) Click on Add New.

(iv) In the text box of Search, type wordpress language, and then click on Search Plugins.

(v) In the Name column go to WordPress Language and click on Install Now.

(vi) Once WordPress finishes installing the plugin, click on Activate Plugin.

(vii) After the plugin gets activated, a language section menu appears in the top menu bar of the administration interface :

(viii) Select the language that you want to use and then click on Switch language to change the WordPress language. If you can’t view the language that you want, click on More languages option to view additional language options.

(iv) The new language setting will be effective immediately.

Also Read :

How To Create A Link For Your Customers To Leave Google Reviews?
How To Configure Basic WHM Settings For VPS & Dedicated Server?