Multilingual Menus

Elemental Menu supports multilingual by default. In this article, we use WPML as an example.

Table of Content

1. 1. Translate a WordPress Menu
2. 2. Translate a Mega Submenu
3. 4. Translate a Normal Submenu

1. Translate a WordPress Menu

If you don’t know how to translate a menu with WPML, please refer to this article. In this guide, we only show you how to display a translated menu with Elemental Menu.

Let’s say we have an Elementor Header Template displaying an original menu in English named English Menu and a translated menu named Spanish Menu:

Now, to show the Spanish Menu:

1. Switch to Spanish on the WordPress admin dashboard by selecting Spanish on the WPML dropdown.
2. Open the Spanish Header Template to edit. If the Header Template isn’t translated, please translate it first. If you don’t know how, please read this document to know how to translate an Elementor template.
3. On the Menu setting of the Elemental Menu widget, select the Spanish Menu.
4. Save Header Template. DO NOT add any rules to the “Display Conditions”, leave it as default.

[NOTICE] After being saved, the Elementor template may disappear on the frontend. This bug has been reported here. If it happens, follow these steps to fix it:

1. Switch to the default language on the WordPress admin dashboard by selecting the default language on the WPML dropdown.
2. Open the original version of the Header Template to edit.
3. Save the “Display Conditions” again. Just save it, DO NOT change any rules there.

2. Translate a Mega Submenu

Elemental Menu saves data of menu items by their unique IDs. Meanwhile, WPML creates new menu items with new IDs every time we translate a WordPress menu. It means that menu items of a translated menu are different from the original menu items.

So the best way to translate a mega submenu is to save the mega submenu in English as a template, import that template into the corresponding Spanish menu item, then translate the imported mega submenu’s content.

Basically, the steps are:

1. Switch to English language and open the English Header Template to edit the menu item you want. (If you don’t know how to open a menu item editor, please read this document.)
2. On the Menu Item Editor, save the document as a template (If you don’t know how, pelase read this document). Names it “English Mega Submenu”, for example.
3. Switch to Spanish language and open the Spanish Header Template to edit the corresponding menu item, enable “Mega” and import the “English Mega Submenu” template. If you don’t know how to import an Elementor template, please read this document.
4. Translate the English content into Spanish directly on the Menu Item Editor.

4. Translate a Normal Submenu

Menu items in a Normal Submenu are translated when translating a WordPress menu. You just need to update Icons or Badges if needed.