Weaver Xtreme is distributed with translation files for over 20 world languages which will automatically be used if your site has been set up properly for your language. Beyond that, WordPress and Twenty Eleven have translations available for many languages that can serve as a base for making a new Weaver Xtreme translation.

If you need to make your site display in a language other than English, the place to start is the Installing WordPress in Your Language page at WordPress.org. You have to install both the WordPress translations for your language, plus the theme translations. But since Twenty Eleven is the current standard theme, its translations should be automatically included when you install WordPress for your language. Because Weaver visitor side wording is based on a combination of the default Twenty Eleven theme and standard WordPress messages, those two translation files can serve as a basis for creating a new visitor side translation for Weaver Xtreme beyond those already included.

The Weaver admin panel, on the other hand, is still strictly English – it is has so much help and explanations, that it would be very difficult to translate. But the important part is that you can use the existing language translation files for Twenty Eleven and WordPress with Weaver to create a new translation file so that people who visit your site will see your native language.

Here’s what you need to do. The goal is to download three files from your site to your own computer, use a free tool called Poedit to create the translation, and then upload the translation back to your site. You may need to use your site’s host control panel interface (e.g., cPanel), or use your ftp access. Here are the steps.

1. Down load Weaver Xtreme‘s .pot translation file. It is found at /wp-content/themes/weaver-xtreme/languages/weaverx. pot. After you have downloaded it to your own computer, rename it to reflect your local language – for example, es_ES.po if you were doing a Spanish version (that’s already been done, but we will use es_ES for the rest of our examples). This file will become the main translation file you will eventually re-upload to your site.
2. Find Twenty Eleven’s language directory. It will usually be at “/your-site-root-directory/wp-content/themes/twentyeleven/languages“. That directory contains the Twenty Eleven language files. Once your site has been installed for your language, that directory should contain 2 or 3 files (perhaps more). Two of those files will match your language setting. For example, if you have installed the Spanish version of WordPress, you’ll find es_ES.po and es_ES.mo there. Download the es_ES.po (use your own language equivalent) file to your computer, but rename it to something like es_ES-2011.po so you can tell it apart from the other files.
3. Now find the WordPress main language file. It will be found at /wp-content/languages/es_ES.po. Again, download that file to your computer, using your language, and renaming it (for example, es_ES-wp.po) so you don’t mix it up with the other two files.
4. You should now have three files on you computer – Weaver Xtreme‘s weaverx.pot renamed to es_ES.po, and the two files from WordPress – es_ES-2011.po and es_ES-wp.po.
5. Now download Poedit from http://www.poedit.net – it has versions for both Mac and Windows. This will serve as your main tool.
6. Open the main Weaver Xtreme es_ES.po file. It should contain all the visitor side strings (about 100 of them), but no translation. The goal will be to find the translations from the other two files, and copy/paste them into the Weaver Xtreme file.
7. Open each of the other files, es_ES-2011.po and es_ES-wp.po in new Poedit windows. These files will have a bunch of strings with both the English and the translated versions.
8. Here’s the procedure:
   • Click on the first untranslated string in the Weaver version. This will be displayed in the top one of two boxes on the bottom of Poedit. The top one is English, the bottom one (should be empty now) the translated version.
   • In the English box at the bottom, select the entire string, and copy it. (You’ll want to learn the short cut key for select all, copy, and paste – usually cmd-A, cmd-C, and cmd-V – where cmd is the appropriate key for Mac or Windows).
   • Now switch to the Poedit window that has the 2011 version of the translation – most of the strings will be found in that file, but some are still in the WP file. Enter the Find command (cmd-F), and paste the original English string into the find pattern. This will find the translated string. If you don’t find it in the 2011 version, search for it in the WP version. This will work for all strings except a couple involving RSS, which you can usually just use RSS as the translation.
   • Now select and copy the translation from the 2011 or WP bottom window, and move to the Weaver window. You can now paste that translation into the bottom box on the Weaver Poedit window.
   • Repeat about 100 times for each string. This can be done in 20 or 30 minutes, usually.
   • If you can’t find a string, feel free to provide your own translation.
   • Save you work often. Whenever you save, Poedit will create both a .po and a .mo version of the translation files.
9. Finally, upload the new es_ES.po and es_ES.mo created by Poedit to your /wp-content/themes/weaverx/languages/ directory. Your visitor side translations should be automatically used now.

You can use this procedure to edit an existing file as well if you want to create a different translation. You can even use this technique to create alternate wordings for any visitor side message, even for the English version.

If you create a new translation, please send it to us, and we will include it in future versions of Weaver Xtreme.