Translating the theme
Rural Blog is translation-ready. Every string the theme prints goes through
WordPress’s translation functions under the text domain rural-blog, and the
template file ships in languages/rural-blog.pot.
What is translatable
The theme’s own words — not your content, which is already in whatever language you wrote it.
- Skip to content, Skip to the main menu
- Search, Open menu, Close, Menu
- Continue reading, Newer posts, Older posts, Page %s
- Tags, Pinned post, (Untitled), Untitled
- By %s, %s comment / %s comments
- Results for “%s”, We found %d result…, Nothing here
- This content is password protected…, Password, Enter
- Built with %s — the footer credit
- All rights reserved. — the default copyright text
- Every Customizer label and description
- The aria-labels on the header, the menus and the mobile panel
Roughly 250 strings.
Three ways to translate
1. Contribute it to WordPress.org
translate.wordpress.org hosts community translations for every theme in the directory. If a translation reaches enough coverage there, WordPress downloads it automatically for every site in that locale — including yours, with no files to manage.
This is the best option if you are translating into a language others use. Search for Rural Blog on translate.wordpress.org and start suggesting.
2. Loco Translate
Translate from inside the dashboard, no files to move. See Loco Translate.
3. Poedit and .po/.mo files
The classic route, and the right one if you are comfortable with files. See .po and .mo files.
Set the site language first
Settings → General → Site Language. WordPress loads a translation only for the
locale the site is actually set to, so a de_DE translation on an en_US site
does nothing.
Translating your own content
None of the above touches your posts and pages. For a multilingual site, use Polylang or WPML — they work with the theme like any other, and the theme’s own strings will come from the translation files above.
Right-to-left languages
Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Urdu are handled — see RTL.