Multilingual sites with Wix: Translating elements
In my previous post, I used a Canadian flag to indicate both English and French on my bilingual site. I thought this would be alright, since I’m not using a language toggle or menu that displayed flags anyway.
However, flags are used in the Wix Controls menu to show which version of the site you’re working on. If I used the same flag for both languages, I'll be continually second guessing which language/version I'm in.
So instead of using a Canadian flag, I went full colonial and used a British flag for English and a French flag for French on my dashboard.
Then I started following the instructions described in this guide.
Once you've switched from your main language, a Translate option becomes available when you click on translatable items on a page.
Note that Text elements can be translated directly, while Contact forms and Menus have to be updated either via the Rename feature which can be found after clicking the (...) button.
If there's an element that can't be translated, try Settings. This was how I translated the Send button for my contact form.
For those less than fluent in French, a useful tip from my teacher is to use the Word Reference dictionary in case Google Translate doesn’t cut it.
When translating, a good thing to remember is that when you translate from English to French, sometimes the text will tend to be longer.
For instance, if you’re translating menu link text, you might be surprised to find menu items disappearing or being replaced with a mysterious "More."
Thankfully the solution is simple: just drag on the orange box to make the menu element larger so that there's enough room to display all the menu items.
So here's what my new French homepage looks like:
Bad grammar aside, you might notice that I wasn't able to translate the:
Language menu
Wix Pro Gallery
I found the inability to translate the Language menu a little surprising. When you're in the French version of your site, shouldn't the language menu read "anglais | français" instead of "English | French?"
As for not having a translatable gallery, this means that if you wish to have French titles or descriptions for your images or video, you would have to place them in the same fields as the English ones.
And here's what my French blog looks like:
It turns out that the blog element can't be translated either, but according to this you can use categories and feeds to simulate the appearance of a multilingual blog.
So if you're thinking of translating your Wix site, look at this list of which content can and cannot be translated first. If the main features of your site are on the What can't be translated? list, then you can vote for your feature to be made translatable and revisit translating your site later, which is just what I did.
I went back into the Multilingual settings and simply unpublished the French version by switching the toggle on Show your French site.
