String Translation

Translate any text string from any plugin or theme without touching code.

plugins/woocommerce/templates/cart.php
// Original plugin code — untouched
echo __( 'Add to basket', 'woocommerce' );
Rendered output
  • 🇩🇪de_DEIn den Warenkorb
  • 🇫🇷fr_FRAu panier
  • 🇪🇸es_ESAñadir al carrito
  • 🇯🇵ja_JPカートに追加

No Code Changes Required

PerfLocale intercepts any translatable text from your plugins and themes automatically. Just find the string and provide your translation — no edits to plugin or theme files.

Files

Recommended

Compiled .l10n.php served natively by WordPress.

wp-content/languages/perflocale/
  • PHPde_DE-woocommerce.l10n.php
  • PHPfr_FR-woocommerce.l10n.php
  • PHPes_ES-default.l10n.php
  • Zero filter overhead
  • Cached by OPcache
  • Best for production

Database

Lazy Load

Pulled from MySQL on demand via the gettext filter.

wp_perflocale_strings
  • Edit live in admin
  • No file generation
  • Best for development

Two Storage Modes

Choose file-based storage for maximum speed on production sites, or database storage for team-managed translations from the admin interface. Pick once, switch any time — zero data loss.

String Translations close-up: two language columns side-by-side — 'English (GB)' and 'Deutsch' — with three rows: 'Add to basket' / 'In den Warenkorb', 'Sale!' / 'Angebot!', 'Free delivery over £50' / 'Versandkostenfrei ab 50 €'. Click to open the wider four-language view with more rows.
Edit every locale side-by-side — gaps stay highlighted

Built-in String Scanner

Analyze your active plugins and theme to discover all translatable strings automatically. Get a complete list of every piece of text you can translate.

Singular

One source string, one translation.

__( 'Add to basket', 'woocommerce' )
  • de_DEIn den Warenkorb

Plurals

CLDR plural rules — Russian uses 3 forms, Arabic 6.

_n( '%d item', '%d items', $n, 'wc' )
  • n = 11 товар
  • n = 33 товара
  • n = 77 товаров

Context

Same English word, different meaning — translated correctly per context.

_x( 'Post', 'verb', 'app' )
  • de_DEVeröffentlichen
_x( 'Post', 'noun', 'app' )
  • de_DEBeitrag

Full Translation Support

Handle singular strings, complex plural rules for languages like Arabic and Russian, and context-aware strings that distinguish identical text used differently.

MT to:
Above threshold? Dispatched as a background job ▼
bulk_string_translate running
1,860 of 3,000 translations 62%

Bulk Machine Translation

Send rows to your MT provider straight from the Strings admin page — pick specific rows with checkboxes, every row matching the active filter (any combination of domain, context, search, status, or language), or the entire strings table. Target languages are chip selectors, so multi-language dispatches are one click each.

Small dispatches run inline; large ones queue automatically as a bulk_string_translate background job — live progress, cancel, and retry on the Jobs page. A 5,000 string × target pairs ceiling per dispatch keeps a misclick on a 100,000-row table from quietly draining your provider credits. Placeholders like %s, %1$d and inline HTML are masked before the provider call and restored after; any translation that loses a placeholder is rejected rather than shipped to every visitor with broken formatting. How background jobs work →

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