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How to change website language

Both WordPress and WooCommerce provide multi-languages support. No matter which language the website was originally created, you can always turn it to any language you want. All you have to do is going to “Settings”, “Language” and select the language you want.

So here for example, I will turn this website to Duetsch. And it will look like this:

You can see that the wpadmin titles has been changed to German language.

The change of language takes effect not only in wp-admin area, but also in the frontend – everything except the text that you type yourself.

If the links you entered in the navigation is English, it will stay as English. If the links you entered in the navigation is Deutsch, it will show up as Deutsch. But in the default setting where the text are not what you type, you can see the difference in language. For example, the text in ‘add to cart’ button, or ‘view cart’ button will be changed to a different language . The change of language is most obvious in a cart checkout page. You will see the change of language in label such as city, zip code. This allows a consistency of language you type and the language of your selection.

As I switch languages in LA Retreats.com, somehow it is not working. But in jenniferjlin.com, it is working fine. So I am putting the image of what the checkout page would look like in a testing product page when I switch the language to Deutsch. This should be also what your site looks like.

This simple change works fine if your website uses one language only. If you would like to give users options of several languages, then WPML (wpml.org) will be what you can look into. I haven’t tested WPML yet so I would skip it here.

One reminder: “Profile” (which you can access from top right hand side of the screen) also has a ‘Language’ selection. This allow each logged in user to select the language he will use in ‘admin’ panel only. It will not affect the site-wide language.