Mix languages in a WordPress post / pages with a simple shortcode and gettext

In a current project I am using pages as templates, to load content into specific containers on the website. The website will be using up to 15 different languages.

The main language setup is done through WPML, which creates linked content per language. This helps, as some languages will fail terribly when translating them through a pure gettext setup, as the words setup is often completely different.

But there is always static stuff that can be translated directly through the language files. For that I use a simple shortcode that allows me to keep the native language as a basis in all linked content. Easier to move around, as I can actually read and understand it :)

Call the shortcode from the functions.php

add_shortcode('quick_trans','do_quick_trans');

The shortcode function itself. This loads the language textdomain from the specified location and translates the string.

function do_quick_trans($atts, $content) {

 extract(shortcode_atts(array(

        'location' => 'PATH_TO_LANG_FILE',

        'lang' => 'LANG_TO_USE',


'textdomain' => 'TEXTDOMAIN'

 ), $atts));

                                
load_textdomain($textdomain, $location.$lang.'.mo'); 

$content = __($content, $textdomain);

                

return $content;

   
 }

How to use it in your post or page content

German

[quick_trans lang="de_DE"]Simple is nice![/quick_trans]

 
Spanish

[quick_trans lang="es_ES"]Simple is nice![/quick_trans]

 
Spanish - Latin America / with a special path for the lang file location

[quick_trans lang="es_LA" location="/wp-content/..."]Simple is nice![/quick_trans]