How to customise the translations in WooCommerce 2.2

Following the request made to us by some clients, we are going to explain how we can customise the translations of the recently released WooCommerce 2.2, and protect the customised language files against future WooCommerce updates.

What do we need?

We need an FTP manager, such as the magnificent FileZilla, to be able to move four files from one folder to another, and from that one to another, and a fantastic WordPress plugin called CodeStyling Localization.

If we try to edit the Spanish language of WooCommerce 2.2 directly with CodeStyling Localization, we will find that no language appears, whereas in earlier versions they did appear, so we are going to look step by step at what we have to do in order to be able to edit the Spanish language correctly.

Step by step

The first thing we are going to do is access our server by FTP, so we must have an FTP manager installed and the Server, User name and Password details. Once we have logged in, we will go to the path /wp-content/languages/plugins, and there we will copy the following files:

• woocommerce-admin-es_ES.mo.
• woocommerce-admin-es_ES.po.
• woocommerce-es_ES.mo.
• woocommerce-es_ES.po.

Once we have them copied, we go to the path /wp-content/plugins/woocommerce/i18n/languages, where we will paste them.

And now what?

CodeStyling Localization

Now we go back to WordPress and go to Tools -> Localization, from where we will access the CodeStyling Localization panel, which we can see in the image on the right.

Before carrying out any operation we will click on the Rescan button and on the Scan now one that appears in the pop-up window.

Once the operation has finished, we can close the window by clicking on Finished and click the Edit button to begin customising the Spanish language files according to the needs of our online shop.

For all the modifications and customisations we make to take effect, we must click the button called Generate mo-file, which will save the new texts in the files we copied in the initial step.

Finishing the process.

We have now customised the files, but they are in a path that is currently completely unreadable for WooCommerce 2.2, so we will open our FTP manager again and go once more to the last path indicated above: /wp-content/plugins/woocommerce/i18n/languages, where we will copy the newly generated files, which keep the same names and extensions, and we will paste them into the path /wp-content/languages/, although in a different folder from plugins.

To do so we must create a folder called woocommerce, whose full path will be /wp-content/languages/woocommerce, and where we will paste the files we have just modified and copied.

Conclusion.

In this way, by creating the new folder /wp-content/languages/woocommerce, we make sure that the modification we have just made to the Spanish language files remains unalterable through future WooCommerce updates, whereas if we paste the files into their original path, /wp-content/languages/plugins, when we update to the future version 2.2.4, all the work done will be lost for ever.

We hope this tutorial helps you to customise the WooCommerce texts according to the needs of your online shop and helps you keep your translations unchanged throughout the coming WooCommerce updates, although you will certainly have to roll up your sleeves and carry out these operations again in future versions, for example in 2.3.