Introduction

Have you ever used WordPress for your own website or for your clients? Have you ever looked for and installed plugins for it? I guess that your both answers are YES.

So far so good, but what do you do if you need to translate your theme or plugin in your language? You may say that exists a file as .PO which is used especially for that reason. For example by using Poedit and .PO it’s pretty easy to make your translation.

Well, you’re right, but tell me the truth? Have you ever searched for that .PO file within the theme directory or plugin only to find that it’s not there? And if this is your case, what would you do then? Please don’t tell me that you would edit or change the theme… Of course you can use a child theme for that reason, but still it’s not the correct and easy way for that.

The right and professional way is to generate a .POT file. What a pity that the theme author hasn’t created it along with the theme. At least we hope that he had developed it in the correct way, so that to generate a .POT file would make any sense. Here I point to the use of translatable strings.

What is .POT File Used For?

First of all let us clear out what does the abbreviation POT means. Actually it stands for Portable Object Template. This is the file that you get when you extract texts from the application. Normally, you send this file to your translators.

The tool (in our case Poedit) that scans your PHP source will produce a .POT file. This file includes only the original texts, which needs translation.

What is Poedit?

Poedit is a software that offers the best way to translate apps and sites (that use gettext). Thanks to its distraction-free approach, you’ll translate faster and easier with it. Get your hands dirty and download it for free.

10 Steps to Generate a .POT File Using Poedit

Step 1

Download and install Poedit on your machine. My Poedit version is 1.6.7.

Step 2

• Start Poedit
• File -> Catalogs manager
• New – create new translations project
• Project name – put the name of the main folder of your theme/plugin
• Browse – select the main folder of your theme/plugin and click OK
• Close the Catalogs manager

Please take into consideration that all the entered data is just for example. You must put your own instead. As a matter of fact the entered data is not a dummy one, but these are the steps I followed to create a .POT file for my new WP Plugin “GSY Ajax Recent Posts”.

Step 3

• File -> New
• Select “English (United States)”
• Click OK

Step 4

• Catalog -> Properties
• Project name and version – put here the name of your theme/plugin. Here I don’t mean the name of a folder or file, but the actual name. For example the name of my plugin is “GSY Ajax Recent Posts”.
• Source code charset – select “UTF-8 (recommended)”
• Click OK

Step 5

• File -> Save
• File name – put “en_US.pot”. I know that the .POT file extension is not listed. Instead you will find only .PO. Don’t worry about that, simply type it yourself as “en_US.pot”.
• Check the directory you’re going to save it in. Must be in the main folder of your theme/plugin.
• Click Save

Step 6

• Check your main folder of your theme/plugin. There must be two new files created: “en_US.pot” and “en_US.mo”.
• Delete the second one “en_US.mo”.

Step 7

• Catalog -> Properties
• Go to “Sources paths” tab
• On the “Paths” section click on “New item”
• Simply put a dot “.” and press ENTER to make sure it’s saved there

 Step 8

• Go to “Sources keywords” tab
• Click on “New item”
• Type in as much new items as you wish. In my case I used only two because those are used on the plugin only. For more information see “Strings for Translation” in I18n for WordPress Developers.
• Click OK

Step 9

• Catalog -> Update from sources
• If a small window appear asking you to save changes – click on Save

• Now on your screen you’ll see that the .POT file is filled with all the data that need to be translated.
• Click on the big button “Save” as shown below:

Step 10

• Close the program Poedit
• In the main folder of your theme/plugin you’ll see that the file “en_US.mo” is created again. Delete it again.
• The very much desired and completed file is there: “en_US.pot”.

From now on it’s very easy to start Poedit, open this .POT file and make your translations i.e. your .PO and .MO files.

One thing to pay attention is that if you want to use those files in a plugin and not a theme they must be renamed like that: my-plugin-{locale}.mo where the locale is the language code and/or country code you defined in the constant WPLANG in the file wp-config.php.

Summary

I hope that the current tutorial is clear enough and you learned how in 2 minutes to generate a .POT file using Poedit. I wish I had such a tutorial before I made my first .POT file. Of course I googled a lot and read many articles, but to tell you the truth none of them was that much explainable. If I found an article it was either with an old version of Poedit or missed some key steps. Honestly speaking it took me many ours to find my way.

I’ll be happy to hear your comments and if you do have any advices concerning the topic feel free to share them.

Resources

• I18n for WordPress Developers
• Installing WordPress in Your Language