Quick Tip: Use the mysteriously named _e, _n, and __ functions

You may have come across these features in your WordPress career. These can be used for translation purposes. Here are some simple examples of using them.

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Why use them?

The fact is that WordPress can be used and translated into any language in the world. If you want a web layout that can handle multiple languages, you can do so using the default translation system built into WordPress. You don't even have to write complex PHP code or plugins for this. Just use these methods and make appropriate language files.

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Where to use them?

The place to use these features is in the PHP files of themes and plugins. For beginners, I recommend using them only in themes, but later you can explore using them in plugins as well.

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Get text file

To translate text, WordPress uses the gettext translation framework. This data is stored in POT (Portable Object Template), PO (Portable Object) and MO (Machine Object) files. You can create these files using the open source poEdit and GNU gettext. The default language files for the WordPress interface are located in the wp-content folder. For more information, see the Translation in WordPress Codex article.

../wp-content/languages/uk.mo
../wp-content/languages/uk.po

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Example

_e is used for simple text, while _n can be used for the plural form of a word, and you can even define different forms for different numbers of objects or things.

<!-- Making a h1 heading -->
<h1><?php _e("apple"); ?></h1>

<!-- Sample paragraph -->
<p><?php _n("piece", "pieces", 3); ?></p>

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For developers

If you are a PHP developer and maybe want to write a plugin or other useful stuff related to your WordPress project, you can use the __ function which returns the translation of a given string Version. This returned string can be integrated into any WordPress code you want.

// return the translation of apple in a German sentence
echo "Das ist ein " . __("apple") . "!";

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references

So the main difference between __ and _e is that the latter echoes the results to the web page. __ Used as an alias for the translate() function. These functions can be found in wp-includes/l10n.php.

Reference page for the function here:

• _e
• _n
• __

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