How to translate field labels without WPML

• briandoh

• May 26, 2016 at 12:31 am

Hello,
I have a problem translating ACF custom field labels without any translation plugin using WordPress’ own l18n functions.

I created my own WordPress theme and included ACF 5.3.7 (https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/resources/including-acf-in-a-plugin-theme/).

My theme is translated using WordPress’ l18n functions. I created the language files (en_US.mo/.po and de_DE.mo/.po) with Poedit in my theme, set up my own textdomain (my_theme) in functions.php and switched the WordPress language to German. My theme has a custom options page (completely independent of ACF) with some form labels which get translated just fine. Therefore my implementation of the translation and the language files are okay!

Afterwards I created some custom fields with ACF, exported them as PHP and included them in the theme. The fields show up in the backend and work fine.

<?php
if(function_exists('acf_add_local_field_group')){
  acf_add_local_field_group(array(
    'key'                   => 'group_5719fb17d39b1',
    'title'                 => _x('Related Posts', 'ACF Related Post', 'my_theme'),
    'fields'                => array(
      array(
        'key'               => 'field_573ee1d2fc9cf',
        'label'             => _x('Choose some posts', 'ACF Related Post', 'my_theme'),
        'name'              => 'related_posts',
        'type'              => 'relationship',
        'instructions'      => '',
        'required'          => 0,
        'conditional_logic' => 0,
...

I want to translate the labels of the ACF fields in the backend. As you can see I used WordPress’ l18n functions to translate the custom field labels.

Unfortunately the ACF field labels do not get translated. I know I can use something like WPML to translate it, but I don’t want to use a plugin for something I can achieve in the theme.

How do I translate custom ACF field labels in the WordPress backend without a translation plugin like WPML?

I found this in the ACF documentation regarding translation but it isn’t very helpful at all: https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/resources/multilingual-custom-fields/

I would appreciate every little hint how to solve this.

Best regards,
Brian

—

ACF 5.3.7
Wordpress 4.5.2
No other plugins.

• James

• May 26, 2016 at 2:23 pm

Hi @briandoh

I believe you need to set the “l10n_textdomain” on ACF settings. This page should give you more idea about it: https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/resources/acfsettings/.

I hope this helps 🙂

• briandoh

• May 26, 2016 at 6:25 pm

Hi James,
thank you so much for your help, this solved it! 🙂

I had to add 2 filters and replace every _x() function with __().

The filter:

function custom_acf_settings_localization($localization){
  return true;
}
add_filter('acf/settings/l10n', 'custom_acf_settings_localization');

function custom_acf_settings_textdomain($domain){
  return 'my_theme';
}
add_filter('acf/settings/l10n_textdomain', 'custom_acf_settings_textdomain');

And replace

'title' => _x('Related Post', 'ACF Related Post', 'my_theme'),

with

'title' => __('Related Post', 'my_theme'),

Now it’s working perfectly! Thanks! 🙂

• francuelsoares

• January 30, 2018 at 7:22 am

I tried the same solution, but my problem continues. 🙁

• Jeppe Skovsgaard

• November 13, 2019 at 5:58 am

The problem continues for me as well. I have added those filters mentioned by briandoh, and I have tried different priorities and replacing esc_html__() with __(), but nothing is being translated. Could the reason be, that I’m trying to do this within a plugin?

This is my code for loading the translation:

/**
 * Load translations
 */ 
add_action('plugins_loaded', 'sg_slide_in_load_plugin_textdomain'); 
function sg_slide_in_load_plugin_textdomain() {
    load_plugin_textdomain('sg-slide-ins', FALSE, basename(dirname( __FILE__ )) . '/languages/');
}

add_filter('acf/settings/l10n', 'sg_slide_in_acf_settings_localization');
function sg_slide_in_acf_settings_localization($localization){
	return true;
}

add_filter('acf/settings/l10n_textdomain', 'sg_slide_in_acf_settings_textdomain');
function sg_slide_in_acf_settings_textdomain($domain){
	return 'sg-slide-ins';
}