In January 2016, the Booking & Appointment for WooCommerce plugin officially became compatible with WPML.
WPML plugins enable your WooCommerce shop to be available in multiple languages. The Booking & Appointment for WooCommerce plugin transforms your WooCommerce shop into a full-fledged Booking platform.
A. Using the WooCommerce Booking & Appointment Plugin with WPML
Install and activate WooCommerce Booking & Appointment plugin.
Install and activate the WooCommerce Multilingual, WPML Media, WPML Multilingual CMS, WPML String Translation, and WPML Translation Management plugins from WPML.
Find the “WPML” menu listed on your admin dashboard. Under this menu, find the “String Translations” sub-menu.
In the process of detecting the strings from our WooCommerce Booking & Appointment plugin, you will need to do the following:
Set ‘Translate the theme and plugins using WPML’s String Translation’ under the ‘Select how to translate strings’ in the Theme and plugins. This can be found under the Theme and Plugins localization menu.
Under the Theme and Plugins localization page, select the ‘WooCommerce Booking & Appointment plugin’ from the ‘Strings in the plugins’ listing. Rescan the selected plugins for strings.
The Strings in the plugins will allow you to see all the domains related to the Booking & Appointment plugin under the Strings Translation page.
However, WPML can scan strings from the Booking & Appointment plugin automatically from the .po file available in the plugin.
Under the “String Translations” menu you can search for the strings of the WooCommerce Booking & Appointment plugin by using the filter “Select strings within domain”.
Select the below-mentioned options to view all the strings from our plugin:
admin_texts_book.date-label
admin_texts_book.ics-file-name
admin_texts_book.item-cart-date
admin_texts_book.item-cart-date
admin_texts_book.item-cart-time
admin_texts_book.item-meta-date
admin_texts_book.item-meta-time
admin_texts_book.time-label
admin_texts_book.time-select-option
bkap_block_booking
bkap_block_booking_price
bkap_special_booking_price
woocommerce-booking
woocommerce_booking
You can add translations for each string on the String Translation page. You can assign them to a translator to translate the strings into your desired language.
B. How to translate a bookable product into different languages?
When you create a new product with all its information and booking settings, you will find a “Language” meta box added to the WooCommerce product page from WPML.
Here all the languages you have selected for translations under the WPML > Languages menu will be listed along with two options “Translate” and “Duplicate”.
For translating the product into your desired language, select the Duplicate checkbox next to the languages you want to translate the product to.
Language meta box on Add/Edit Products page:
Note: Do not click the ‘+’ sign to translate the product. It will create the translated product but won’t copy the booking settings to the translated product.
Once the Duplicate checkbox is ticked, a Duplicate button will be displayed.
Clicking on it will reload the product page. the product will be duplicated in all the selected languages Along with the product information & booking settings set in the default language of the WooCommerce product.
Language meta box on the Edit Products page after duplicating the product:
After the products are translated, the Products page will list the languages the product is translated into.
Additionally, you can filter the products by language.
Admin Products page:
You can check the front end of the product in the translated language by switching to another language using the language switcher. You can set the language switcher position from the WPML -> Languages menu in the admin dashboard.
Frontend Product page in the default (English) language
Frontend Product page in the translated (Spanish) language.
C. How to Edit the Booking settings after the product is translated into other languages?
Using this, you can make any changes in the booking settings after the product has been duplicated into other languages.
When changes are made to the product in the default language, they will be copied into the product in other languages.
For instance, if you want to change the Number of days to choose from 30 (default value) to say 60 days after you have duplicated the product in the Spanish language, you would need to change this setting in the product in the default language, which is English.
Making the changes in the product in the English language will make the changes in the products in other languages. In this case, it is Spanish, French, and Dutch.
D. How to use Multiple Currencies with the WooCommerce Booking & Appointment plugin?
WPML provides a “Manage Currencies” option. It allows you to sell your product in multiple currencies.
You will find it under the WooCommerce Multilingual -> General Options menu.
The WooCommerce Booking & Appointment plugin also works with the different currencies set using this option. The converted price will be displayed according to the user-selected currency on the product page.
WPML – Multiple currencies with WooCommerce Booking & Appointment plugin
Bookings availability with translated products:
If the product is available in different languages, the total availability for a date will be common over all the products in different languages.
Let’s say that there are 20 bookings available for a date. There are 5 orders placed using the Spanish language and 10 orders placed using the English language on 14th February 2016.
In such a case, there will be 5 more bookings available for 14th February 2016, irrespective of the language used to place the order.