About this plugin
Open any page on your site, click “Translate this page” in the admin bar, choose a
target language, and either auto-translate every visible string (via a free
machine-translation service) or edit translations by hand while seeing the page
update live.
Saved translations are rendered server-side into the HTML response (SEO-friendly:
no flash of untranslated text, and hreflang alternates in the head), and visitors
switch languages via a link-based switcher (bottom-right).
Developed by Ricardo Sawir for Sawir Studio LLC.
- Website: https://sawirstudio.com
- X: https://x.com/RicardoSawir
- GitHub: https://github.com/sawirricardo
- Email: [email protected]
g. /es/about for Spanish, /about for the source
language (which stays canonical, un-prefixed). Language is resolved in this order:
lang=es → saved cookie → browser Accept-Language → source. Root and
prefix-less URLs auto-detect the visitor’s browser language without redirecting
(a Vary header is sent so shared caches behave).
- Settings → Live Translate: set your source language and tick the languages to offer.
- Visit a front-end page and click “🌐 Translate this page” in the admin bar.
- Pick a language, hit “Auto-translate empty” (or edit strings), then “Save”.
- Visitors use the switcher (bottom-right); each language has its own /xx/ URL.
Note: language path prefixes assume a root-domain install and no top-level page
whose slug is a two-letter language code.
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- Sawir Role Capabilities Manager — Create custom user roles and manage capabilities for new and existing WordPress roles.
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External services
This plugin’s optional “Auto-translate” feature (admin-only, triggered manually
by clicking an Auto-translate/Translate button) sends the source text strings
and the chosen language pair to the MyMemory translation API
net/) to fetch machine translations. The request
is made from the administrator’s browser only when they click the button; no
visitor data is ever sent, and nothing is sent automatically.
- Service terms: https://mymemory.translated.net/doc/en/tos.php
- Privacy policy: https://mymemory.translated.net/doc/en/privacy.php
Developers can swap the provider — see “Custom translation provider” below.
Native WordPress localization (dates, core/theme strings)
On a translated request the plugin switches WordPress’s locale to the target
language, so dates (month/day names) and any installed core, theme, and plugin
translations render natively — the string map only covers the rest.
For this to have visible effect the language pack must be installed. The easiest
way is Settings → General → Site Language: pick and save the language once (which
downloads its pack), then switch back to your source language. Languages without
an installed pack still work for content translation; only native dates/strings
are skipped. Map codes to custom WP locales with the ‘sawir_lt_wp_locale’ filter.
Scan site for strings
Settings → Live Translate → “Scan site now” crawls your published pages, posts,
and public archives to discover every translatable string up front (batched, with
a progress indicator). Discovered strings then appear in the “Edit all site
strings” section right below, where you can pick a language and translate, auto-
translate, or bulk-import the whole site at once instead of page by page. Note:
machine translation is still rate-limited by the free service, so for large sites
use Bulk edit to export and translate elsewhere.
Multisite
Multisite-aware. Each subsite has its own settings and its own translations table,
configured independently. Tables are created on network activation, when a new
subsite is created, and lazily on first admin visit; uninstall cleans every site
on the network.
Custom switcher
Turn off “Built-in switcher” in settings and render your own anywhere in your
theme using sawir_lt_switcher_links(), which returns the language links for the
current page:
php echo $l['active']? >
Each item is [‘code’,’name’,’url’,’active’,’is_source’] (code is ” for the
source language). sawir_lt_current_lang() returns the active language code.
Custom translation provider
Auto-translate uses the free MyMemory API by default. To use your own provider
translate from a
script enqueued after the ‘sawir-lt-walk’ handle. Signature: it receives the
source text and the two language codes, and returns a Promise resolving to the
translated string. Every auto-translate path (in-page editor and admin bulk
translate) routes through it.
0', true ); } }
js:
translation; } ); };<h3>Translations</h3>
The plugin’s own admin/UI text is translation-ready (text domain
“sawir-live-translate”). pot template ships in /languages — drop your
mo there or under wp-content/languages/plugins/. (The in-page editor’s
)