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How to Set Up a Multilingual Site With Merchant and WPML

Using Merchant’s WPML integration, you can translate the text strings of your Merchant modules into any language.

Merchant integrates with WPML out of the box, so once Merchant is activated on your WordPress site, WPML is supported by default.

Below, we’ll see how you can translate your Merchant strings from English into Spanish using the WPML plugin. You can use the same workflow with any other languages.

1. Download the WPML Plugins from Your WPML Account

First, sign in to your WPML account, go to the Downloads page, scroll down to the bottom of the page, click the Download WPML manually button, and download both plugins:

  • WPML
  • String Translation
A screenshot of the Downloads page of a WPML account

2. Install and Activate the WPML and String Translation Plugins

Click the Plugins > Add New Plugin menu in the left sidebar of your WordPress admin area, then click the Upload Plugin button.

Once the file uploader appears on the screen, click the Browse button, select the WPML String Translation ZIP file you have downloaded from your WPML account, then click the Install Now and then the Activate Plugin buttons:

A screenshot of the Add Plugins page of the WordPress admin area

Then, install and activate the WPML plugin from the same page in your WordPress admin area (note that you can also install the two WPML plugins in the opposite order).

3. Configure the WPML Plugin

Before getting started with translating your Merchant strings, you need to configure WPML.

Click the WPML > Setup menu in the left sidebar of your WordPress admin area and go through the onboarding process:

A screenshot of WPML's setup wizard, Languages page

Once you have configured all the settings, click the Finish button at the bottom of the last screen in the setup wizard.

4. Activate the Merchant Module(s) You Want to Translate

To translate a Merchant module with WPML, first, you need to activate it from the Merchant dashboard.

Below, we’ll show how to translate the Inactive Tab Message module from English into Spanish.

Click the Merchant menu in the left sidebar of your WordPress admin area, open the module, then click the Enable button to activate it:

A screenshot of Merchant's Inactive Tab Message module with the Enable button

5. Translate Your Text Strings

Click the WPML > String Translation menu in the left sidebar of your WordPress admin area to open the page where you can add your translations:

The location of the String Translation menu of WPML in the WordPress dashboard

Here, you’ll see all the strings belonging to the Merchant modules you have activated on your site.

You can either add the translations by clicking the + buttons next to the strings or, if you want, you can filter for Merchant’s strings by clicking the In domain dropdown menu at the top of the page and selecting the Merchant option:

Location of the WPML domain filters on the String translation page

Translate each string by clicking the belonging + button and entering the translated string into the string translation modal (WPML will save the translations automatically):

A screenshot of the string translation modal of the WPML plugin

As you can see in the screenshot below, the translated text shows up in your store once you switch the site’s language to Spanish by either using the language switcher or entering the Spanish site URL manually into the browser’s address bar (you can configure the site URL from the WPML > Languages > Language URL format menu):

Frontend view of the translated Inactive Tab message

In the example above, only one Merchant module was activated on the demo site.

If you have more than one active module, they will all show up on WPML’s String translation page, so you can translate them all at once:

WPML String translation page showing more Merchant modules