There are several ways to translate themes and plugins to your language. Here we prefer to use the program Poedit, which you can get here for free.

First, you need to download and install Poedit. Then look within the theme files for a folder named lang, or languages if you want to translate a plugin. There you’ll find a translatable POT file, which you can identify by its .pot extension. Once you found the file, you’ll need to follow these steps:

1. Open the file in Poedit. On the left column, you’ll see the original texts (in English) from the POT file. On the right column you can add your own translation.
2. Go to File → Save as… to save your translations. This process will create two new files: A PO file with the .po extension, and a MO file with the .mo extension. It’s really important to notice that the new files must be named with the locale for your language¹. For example, if you are translating to Spanish, your new files need to be named es_ES.po and es_ES.mo. For plugins, additionally, you need to put the plugin slug before the locale².
3. If you need to modify your translation, just open the generated PO file with Poedit. When you are finished editing, go to File → Save as… again to regenerate the MO file and update your translation.

Finally, you need to be running your WordPress installation in your language. You can see where to find all available translations for WordPress here.

Need Help?

If this information isn’t enough to help you translate your theme or plugin, please let us know it through our support forums.

However, keep in mind that this article only offers specific information about themes and plugins that are developed and maintained by NiceThemes. If you need help to translate a theme or plugin that hasn’t been created by us, please contact the original developer instead.

Further reading

If you want more details about how internationalizations and translations work in WordPress, you can take a look at the following resources:

• Translator’s Handbook
• Internationalizing And Localizing Your WordPress Theme
• Translating Your Theme

Notes

1. If you don’t know what your locale is, you can look for it here.
2. For example, if you’re translating Likes, your new files should be named nice-likes-es_ES.po and nice-likes-es_ES.mo.