Knowledgebase | The Events Calendar

Changing the Language on Your Calendar

Please note that WordPress language settings changed in the WordPress 4.0 release. These instructions are for WordPress 4.0 and beyond.

Trying to translate our free core plugin The Events Calendar? Learn how to do that here – this knowledgebase article is only related to our premium plugins.

The Events Calendar and its add-ons adapt to use the same language used by your WordPress installation. It will default to English, unless you run WP in a different language.

The most recent list of available languages for all Premium Events Calendar add-ons may be found here.

If your language isn’t listed, you can register as a user on our translations site and submit changes right on the website (for more information on that process, see this knowledgebase article).

To change the language for your WordPress site, follow these directions:

1. You’ll need to know your language’s code. Each language has an official code that WordPress uses to reference it. To find this code, visit this page and look for your language’s code in the “WP Locale” column. For example, the code for German is DE_de.

Finding your language's locale code

2. Make sure that WordPress itself has the files required to run your site in your language. Remember the language code you just looked up, in step 1 above? Here’s where you need it: go to /wp-content/languages and look for language files with your language’s code. If you find them, WordPress supports your language. Nice!

3. Make sure the plugin language files you need are in place.  Go to the /lang directory in the plugin files for whichever plugin you are trying to translate; there should be two files for each language code, a .po and a .mo file.

If your language files aren’t there, you’ll need to download them from our translations site. From the site home, select the plugin that you want to get files for. Then find your language in the list and click to view the details. From that page, you can export the .po and .mo files you need. Once you’ve downloaded the files, place them in the /lang folder for the relevant plugin.

Please note that if you are using any of our premium plugins (including Events Calendar PRO) you’ll need to have the files for that plugin as well as the translation files for The Events Calendar. If your language isn’t listed, you can register as a user on our translations site and submit changes right on the website (for more information on that process, see this knowledgebase article).

If you have your Premium Plugin translation files, but do not have translation files for The Events Calendar, read about how to get the translation files for The Events Calendar here. The process is very similar.

4. On your site, go to Settings → General. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where it says Site Language. Select your language from the dropdown and save your changes.

5. Lastly, in your dashboard, go to Settings → Permalinks and clear your permalinks. Your site should now run in the language you enabled.

Important: Keep in mind that translations may not be 100% complete, or may only exist for some plugins. Further, any strings which are marked Yellow in glotpress have not been approved yet, and the updated version will not appear in the downloaded .po or .mo files until it is approved. You may still see some English on your site if this is the case.

Interested in updating a translation, or adding a new one altogether? If so, learn about updating and adding translations for premium plugins here. If you’re interested in contributing to The Events Calendar instead, head here for more information.