As the ALC Network expands into communities with different languages it is becoming necessary to translate our content to serve those communities. To accomplish this I’ve installed the polylang plugin which gives any network site the ability to configure multiple languages to display pages in. Most of our network level pages are created using the Make theme’s page builder to outline content.

This tutorial will cover how to duplicate existing pages for translation then associate them with their native language counterpart.

If you need Polylang activated on your site please contact me. Also note that there is some configuration you’ll need to do before you can follow these directions, see the Polylang documentation. Warning! If you don’t configure the plugin with care you’ll break existing page structure.

Step 1: Duplicate & Translate

Select the page you wish to translate and edit it. You’ll be taken to the WordPress backend for post editing. From here you can either create a blank page or duplicate the existing page structure and replace the content with translations.

To add a blank page for translation by clicking the plus icon next to the language flag.

You should now have a new blank page, just fill in the translation and save! You’re all done.

If you want to duplicate the page structure you’ll need to take a few extra steps. Start by duplicating the current page.

Note: This is only available for Make pages using the Builder Template. If you wish to duplicate other pages you can do this via the post/page list.

Once the page is duplicated go ahead and change the title and the slug, seen here under the title:

Now you simply go through the page copy and make the translations. Sometimes you’ll need to maintain formatting for a particular block of content. Typically you can accomplish this by writing over the current text. If you are pasting in text you’ll want to paste unformatted (cmd/ctrl + shift + V) or by switching to the text tab of the edit window and editing by hand.

Then you can put the text inside the HTML <tags> which contain the style formatting (like the highlighted text above).

Step 2: Associate translation with native post

Once you’ve translated the page you’ll need to associate the translation with the original. This can be accomplished by first setting the language of the current page.

Then you can input the title of the other language page with the appropriate flag underneath.

As you type suggestions will pop up, just choose the one that matches.

That’s it, the two pages are now associated with each other and you can quickly switch between them.