Hi, I’m having trouble translating the Rank Math plugin into my language. It seems the plugin won’t load the complete .po and .mo language files. I’ve found other people online who have had the same issue. Could you please fix this?
Hey, thanks for your reply. I wasn’t referring to the issue I encountered while contributing translations to translate.wordpress.org. The official translations only have limited support for Chinese, so I tried translating the .pot file myself. I encountered issues using my translated .po file. I’ve tried placing the .po and .mo files in the plugin’s languages folder and the system-wide languages folder, but nothing works; all the text remains in English (I’m pretty sure I compiled the .mo file). I also tried the Loco Translate plugin. Uploading the .po file with it successfully translated a small amount of text on the plugin page, but a significant amount of text remained in the original language. The solution at https://www.zhanzhangb.cn/tutorials/rank-math-localization.html seems to be broken; I tried it and it didn’t work, but it shows that others have encountered the same issue. If you need it, I can provide my own translated .po file, though it has numerous translation errors: https://fromsmash.com/kFp0MWxJmo-dt. I’d also like to point out that this error occurs with both the free and premium versions. I understand it’s inappropriate to discuss the premium version in this free forum. I encountered this issue while helping others translate the premium version. I didn’t purchase the premium version, so I can’t ask for premium support. I’m just reminding you that the premium version also has the same issue. We won’t discuss the premium version anymore. I look forward to your response.
Hey, thank you for your reply. I am not referring to encountering issues while contributing translations on translate.wordpress.org. The official translation offers only minimal support for Chinese, so I attempted to translate the .pot file myself. I encountered problems when using my own translated .po file. I have tried placing the .po and .mo files into the plugin’s languages folder as well as the system-level languages folder, but neither had any effect; all text remained entirely in English (I am absolutely certain I compiled the .mo file). I also tried the Loco Translate plugin, uploading the .po file through this plugin; a small portion of the text on the plugin page was successfully translated, but a large amount of text still remained in the original language. Additionally, the method at https://www.zhanzhangb.cn/tutorials/rank-math-localization.html appears to be no longer effective; I tried it and it did not work, but it still indicates that others have encountered the same issue. If you need it, I can provide my own translated .po file, despite the fact that it contains numerous translation errors: https://fromsmash.com/kFp0MWxJmo-dt. Furthermore, I would like to mention that this error exists in both the free and pro versions. I know it is not entirely appropriate to discuss the pro version in this free forum; I encountered this issue while helping someone else translate the pro version. I have not purchased the pro version, so I am not entitled to seek premium support. I am merely reminding you that the pro version has the same issue; we will no longer discuss the pro version going forward. Looking forward to your reply. Sorry, the machine translation seems ambiguous; this is the AI-translated version.
Thank you for clarifying. When installing custom translation files, please ensure the file names follow the correct format. For Rank Math, they should look like this:
seo-by-rank-math-zh_CN.po
seo-by-rank-math-zh_CN.mo
Using rank-math-zh_CN.po will not work, as the plugin requires the seo-by-rank-math prefix.
Once you’ve made the changes, head over to your WordPress Dashboard → Updates and scroll to the bottom and you should notice the “Translations” section where you can update the translations. If you see any button there that says “update” please click it.
If you continue experiencing issues with custom files, we recommend reaching out to Loco Translate’s support for further assistance as this falls outside the scope of our support. The only supported translation method is using the WordPress translation program.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any other questions.
I have already tried renaming the .po and .mo files to “seo-by-rank-math-zh_CN” and placing them in both the “\wp-content\plugins\seo-by-rank-math\languages” and “\wp-content\languages” folders, but the plugin interface remains untranslated, and the update page does not indicate any new translation updates.
Additionally, I would like to point out that the header of the “rank-math.pot” file explicitly states: “X-Domain: rank-math\n”. Therefore, I followed this declaration and named the files “rank-math-zh_CN”, but you indicated that this naming is incorrect. I am now confused about what the correct naming should be. If you are correct, then you should promptly update the header declaration in the “rank-math.pot” file.
I have consulted many other users, and they have all encountered this issue where the plugin fails to load translation language files. This problem has persisted for a long time and is unlikely to be caused by my own misconfiguration. I hope you can fix it as soon as possible. Thank you.
The file is correct and is working fine with Loco Translate. Please ensure that you upload it to the system folder using Local Translate to apply the translations in the back end. Here is a quick screencast for your reference: https://i.rankmath.com/v/jEUvm3
Hope that helps and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
I saw that in your demo video, the plugin interface was successfully translated, but on my website it is still not fully translated—some text on the backend pages is in Chinese, while most of the rest is in English.
I understand it’s hard for you to reproduce my issue, so I’ve set up a test site locally. Here is the site file exported with the All-in-One WP Migration and Backup plugin; the username and password are both “ceshi.ceshi”. You can check what the problem might be. Thank you very much for your help. https://fromsmash.com/rQGmEUIuI_-dt
Sorry, my previous words were a bit too harsh. Because I asked many people, and they all claimed to have encountered the issue of translation language files not loading, I thought your product had such a big bug that could be discovered with just a little testing, and it hadn’t been fixed for months. I didn’t expect that after your testing, you found that the translation language files could load normally. This might be an issue that only people who use Chinese might encounter. I’m truly sorry.
Please navigate to WP Dashboard > Rank Math SEO > Dashboard and disable the React UI module. Once done, the plugin settings should be translated. We have informed the developers about the issue, and they will fix it soon. For now, you will have to keep the React UI option disabled to translate the plugin settings.
Let us know how that goes. Looking forward to helping you.
After disabling the React module, some interfaces that were originally in English did indeed become translated, but there are still some interfaces that remain untranslated. The text for these interfaces exists in the .po file.
