Tiaro Multilingual

Tiaro Multilingual lets one website speak several languages. Every language has its own address, a translation of a page is a page of its own, and visitors change language with a switcher in the menu.

What sets it apart is the fallback: a page you have not translated yet is still reachable under every language’s address and shows the default language there. You can open a new language on day one and translate page by page. The plugin uses no translation service and contacts no other server.

In this article: The Languages Menu · Pages and the Fallback · Translation Status · Media Texts · Glossary and Whole Texts · Names of Categories and Texts per Field · The Language Switcher · Related

The plugin adds Languages to the admin menu, with these screens:

The header of these screens also links to Media texts, the list view of the media library.

A translation is a separate page linked to its original. In the editor, the Languages box shows a page’s language and its translations; the plus sign creates a translation and fills it with the title and content of the original, so you translate in place instead of rebuilding the layout.

As long as a page has no published translation in a language, visitors of that language see the original under their own language’s address. Menus and links on such a page stay in the visitor’s language, and a link to a page that does have a translation leads to the translation.

Note: A draft translation counts as no translation: visitors keep seeing the original until you publish it.

Languages › Translation status lists the pages of the source language with their state in every other language. A summary table shows Translated, Stale and Missing per language.

• Missing: no translation yet. Create translation opens a new, pre-filled one.
• Stale: the source was changed after the translation was last saved. The translation’s edit screen then shows a notice with a link, Open the original.
• Filter by Content type, Language and Show, then click Filter.

An image exists once for all languages. For each additional language, its edit screen and the media window offer four fields: Alternative text, Title, Caption and Description, each followed by the language name. Visitors of that language get these texts instead of the original ones; an empty field keeps the original. The media list shows a Translations column.

Some content is not translated as a page, for example product data, tables and technical texts. For that, Languages › Glossary holds words and phrases with their translation per language. They are replaced when the page is shown in another language: whole words or phrases only, longest match first. Bulk add takes one entry per line with the columns separated by “|”. Finish with Save glossary.

Whole texts, further down, are replaced only when they match completely, such as a table cell or a label. They are looked up before the phrases. Search for a text, change its translation and click Save whole texts.

Note: The glossary only applies where a plugin of the package asks for it, typically product pages. Pages you translate as pages are not touched.

Two more tools appear only on content that a plugin of the package has registered for them:

• Term names: categories shared by all languages get the fields Name and Description per language on their add and edit screens, and a Translations column in the list.
• Texts in other languages: a box on the edit screen of one post that serves every language, with one field per text and language. Each field shows its state: Translated, Not translated, Original changed since this translation or No original text. An empty field keeps the original.

1. Go to Appearance › Menus and open the menu of your header.
2. In the Language switcher box on the left, tick Languages and add it to the menu.
3. Open the new menu item and choose its options: Displays as a dropdown, Displays language names, Displays language codes (DE, EN) instead of names, Displays flags, Forces link to front page, Hides the current language.
4. Save the menu.

The switcher always lists every language, because every page exists in every language through the fallback.

• Menu Element – the element that shows the menu with the switcher
• Tiaro Cache – the page cache purges a page’s translations along with it
• Library and Global Elements – global elements can be translated like pages