WP Job Manager (and all official add-ons) are fully internationalized, which allows you to translate individual strings or use your own language. WP Job Manager comes with several user-contributed language files, but if yours is missing, you can translate it yourself.
Existing Translations of WPJM
All translations or translation work for the core plugin is performed wholly by volunteers. You can see existing publicly available translations of WPJM here:
https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/wp-job-manager/
Any translation which is not 90% or greater will not be automatically installed with WPJM. You can still download it by clicking on the language name, scrolling to the bottom of the language page, and exporting the existing strings.
Translations for our paid add-ons are performed by individual site owners and are not publicly available.
Note: a ‘string’ is any character or series of characters (ie, words) which can be translated.
When You Only Want to Change One Word to Another
If you want to change every instance of ‘Job’ to say ‘Vacancy’, try the Say What plugin. This simple plugin lets you translate any string via the WordPress admin dashboard. Your ‘translation’ can even be English->English!
You’ll need to provide the text domain of the plugin. You can find this in the root file of WPJM (or our other paid add-ons).
Text Domains
For the core WPJM plugin, this information is:
* Text Domain: wp-job-manager
* Domain Path: /languages/
For our paid add-ons, the text domains are:
Applications: wp-job-manager-applications
Application Deadline: wp-job-manager-application-deadline
Bookmarks: wp-job-manager-bookmarks
Embeddable Job Widget: wp-job-manager-embeddable-job-widget
Job Alerts: wp-job-manager-alerts
Job Tags: wp-job-manager-tags
Resume Manager: wp-job-manager-resumes
Simple Paid Listings: wp-job-manager-simple-paid-listings
WooCommerce Paid Listings: wp-job-manager-wc-paid-listings
Say What has more instructions here.
Translating WPJM
WP Job Manager includes a language file (.pot file) which contains all of the English text which can be translated via the plugin. This language file is in the plugin folder in wp-job-manager/languages/.
You can take a look at it here.
The same plugin-name/languages directory is also used for all paid add-ons.
Setting up WordPress in Your Language
WordPress needs to be told which language it should run under.
Change the language in the admin settings screen. This can be done via Settings → General → Site Language. This setting will impact the following areas of your site:
- The language used for your WordPress dashboard (WP Admin)
- The language used for your site’s public-facing (front-end) pages. The Site Language setting will attempt to translate your site, but this also depends on whether your chosen theme and plugins support that language.
This will not translate any existing post and page content – it will just translate the default text strings from your theme/plugins.
Examples of Using Translation Plugins/Software with WPJM
Please note that we cannot provide support for creating translations or for using the following plugins/software. Please contact the plugin developer for help with their plugin or software.
Translation Using Poedit
Poedit is an application you can use on your computer to translate a POT file into your language.
- Download and install Poedit
- Find the POT file in wp-job-manager/languages/wp-job-manager.pot
- Open the POT file in Poedit.
- Translate the strings into your language.
- Go to File → Save as… to save your translations in a PO file.
- After translating, go to File → Save as… again to generate the MO file.
- Or you can set your Poedit always to compile a MO file when saving changes by clicking File → Preferences and on the Editor tab check the Automatically compile .mo file on the save box.
- Upload your PO and MO file to wp-content/languages/wp-job-manager/
Updating your translation
After updates, you can update your po file by opening it and then going to Catalog > Update from the POT file. Choose the file, and it will be updated accordingly.
Translation Using Loco Translate
Loco Translate is a WordPress plugin that allows in-browser editing of PO files for localizing WordPress plugins and themes.
You can then follow the instructions that take you through translating.
They have a helpful beginner’s guide to the plugin as well.
Keeping Translation Files Upgrade Safe
When WordPress automatically updates a plugin, any custom translation files inside the plugin directory will be lost, so please backup your po and mo files. With that in mind, you may want to use one of the following alternative methods of keeping translation upgrade safe.
Put Translations Inside the WP_LANG Directory
You can put your .po and .mo files in the WP_LANG directory to keep them safe from updates. This is usually the wp-content/languages/ directory.
So, for example, if you were translating the Resume Manager add-on, you would put your mo file in wp-content/languages/plugins/wp-job-manager-resumes-LOCALE.mo, replacing LOCALE with your language code.
The naming of your MO files must be in the format:
TEXTDOMAIN-LOCALE.mo
e.g. wp-job-manager-de_DE.mo
There is a list of WordPress locales here; search for your language to see the associated language/locale code.
Multilingual Job Sites with WP Job Manager and WPML
If you want to create a job board site with listings in multiple languages, we recommend using WPML.
You can find documentation for setting up your multilingual job board site here:
https://wpml.org/documentation/plugins-compatibility/translating-wp-job-manager-using-wpml/
Note: If you encounter issues setting up your multilingual site, please open a support ticket with WPML here. They will investigate the issue and then contact our developers if any updates are necessary.
Optional: Contribute Your Translation to Core
All translations are performed by volunteers, not the WPJM development team. The core WPJM translations are hosted on WordPress.org:
https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/wp-job-manager
Anyone can signup and start translating here, and any updates will be included in WP Job Manager updates. Contributing to these translations benefits all users since they will be pulled into the plugins when downloaded.