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BuddyPress Multilingual – Build & Manage Multilingual Communities for BuddyPress and BuddyBoss

BuddyPress Multilingual lets you translate your entire BuddyPress and BuddyBoss website or create sub-communities based on preferred languages.

Help people with shared interests find others who speak their language, or create a completely translated online community for multilingual users. However you use it, BuddyPress Multilingual helps you reach a diverse, global audience by removing language barriers and fostering cross-cultural connections.

Key Features

Craft sub-communities based on language preferences to cater to specific interests in various languages, allowing them to discuss and share their expertise in their preferred languages.

Included with WPML Multilingual CMS and Multilingual Agency accounts

Translate your entire site, including profile fields, group names and descriptions, pages, menus, and more, for an all-inclusive multilingual community experience.

Seamless integration with sites built with BuddyPress and BuddyBoss, delivering a smooth user experience for your community members.

BuddyPress is one of the original WordPress plugins that allows you to turn your site into a fully-functioning social network. It’s a simple, open-sourced option that has been a popular choice for many years. The BuddyPress Multilingual glue plugin allows you and, very importantly, the visitors of your site to have a consistent language experience. It ensures all pages display in the required language.

A translated BuddyPress site

BuddyBoss is built on BuddyPress, offering all the same features with a modern and fresh look. It also offers a premium version, which includes its own theme and even more functionality via the BuddyBoss Platform Pro plugin.

An example of a translated BuddyBoss news feed

On This Page:

Getting Started

Start by installing and activating the following plugins:

Running BuddyPress 12.0 or above?

You need to install and activate the BP Classic Add-on.

This add-on allows you to maintain compatibility with WPML and BuddyPress Multilingual and ensures WPML features work correctly.

Please note: For BuddyPress Multilingual to work, your site’s language URL format needs to be set to use different languages in directories. You can find the language URL options by going to WPMLLanguages and scrolling to the Language URL Format section.

If you’re new to WPML, check out our Getting Started Guide. It quickly walks you through different translation options you can use.

Translating BuddyPress and BuddyBoss Pages

When you install and activate BuddyPress or BuddyBoss, you’ll have a set of pages created automatically. You can easily translate these pages with WPML. You can let WPML translate pages automatically, send them to be translated by others, or do the translation yourself.

A backend list of translated default BuddyPress pages

Translating Other BuddyPress or BuddyBoss Texts

Like many other plugins and themes, BuddyPress and BuddyBoss include text that is not part of the standard Pages, Posts, or Taxonomy. We call these strings, and you can translate them using WPML’s String Translation add-on.

First, go to WPMLTheme and Plugins Localization. If you use BuddyPress or the BuddyBoss Platform, scan the plugin. BuddyBoss Pro includes a theme and pro plugin you can scan for strings as well.

Scanning the BuddyBoss Platform and pro plugin for strings

Translating Profile Fields

BuddyPress and BuddyBoss both allow you to add profile fields to your social network members. Using WPML, you can translate these fields.

After creating the fields in your default language, click the Register fields button in the notice that appears on the Profile Fields page.

Registering fields for translation

Then, go to the WPML → String Translation page, look for those field names and values, and translate them.

Here’s an example of a profile field when translating it on the String Translation page.

Translating a profile field on the String Translation page

Translating Group Names and Descriptions

BuddyPress and BuddyBoss both allow admins and site users to create public, hidden, or private groups.

To translate a group’s name or description, go to WPMLString Translation and find the group content you created. Click the plus icon to add your translations.

Translating a group name and description

After translating the page, name and description, you will see the translated group on your site’s front-end:

A translated group

Known Issues

WPML works fine with this plugin, but sometimes there could be minor issues we're working on. This is expected as both plugins provide frequent updates.

Current unresolved issues:

You can also search all known issues including previously resolved issues for this plugin.

Getting Support

In case you need help translating your site built using BuddyPress and WPML, visit WPML’s support forum.

Updated
April 25, 2024