Translating with Loco Translate

Translate the theme from inside the dashboard, with the one setting that stops an update deleting your work.

Loco Translate is a free plugin that puts the whole translation workflow in the dashboard: no Poedit, no FTP.

Setting up

  1. Plugins → Add New, search Loco Translate, install and activate.
  2. Loco Translate → Themes → Rural Blog.
  3. New language.
  4. Choose your language.

The important step

At Choose a location, Loco offers three places. Pick:

Custom — wp-content/languages/loco/themes/

Not Author (inside the theme folder), which the next theme update deletes. Loco marks that option as unsafe for exactly this reason, and it is the single most common way people lose a translation.

Translating

The editor lists every source string with a box underneath. Work down the list; it saves as you go and compiles the .mo file for you.

Notes:

  • Placeholders — %s, %d, %1$s — must survive into your translation. Loco warns you if one goes missing.
  • Translator comments appear in the sidebar and tell you what a placeholder will contain.
  • The Auto-translate button (DeepL or Google, with an API key) is a decent first pass on the long Customizer descriptions. Read what it produces before saving; UI strings are exactly where machine translation gets the register wrong.
  • Roughly 250 strings, of which about 40 are front-end text a visitor sees. If you are short of time, do those first — search for Continue reading, Search, Tags, Older posts.

Set the site language

Settings → General → Site Language must be the locale you translated into, or WordPress will not load the file.

Syncing after a theme update

When a new version adds strings:

  1. Loco Translate → Themes → Rural Blog, pick your language.
  2. Sync — it pulls the new strings from the updated template.
  3. Translate the additions and save.

Nothing you already translated is lost.

Keeping it

Your files live in wp-content/languages/loco/themes/ and survive theme updates, WordPress updates, and deactivating Loco itself — the .mo is read by WordPress, not by the plugin. You can uninstall Loco once you are finished and the translation keeps working.

Back that folder up with the rest of the site.

Last updated September 12, 2026

Something missing or out of date? Ask us and we will fix the page.