Mant Multilingual

What does Mant Multilingual do?
It serves your site in more than one language without copying anything. The language the site is written in stays at the root, and each language you translate into is served under its own prefix, such as /de/. Posts, pages, products and menus are never duplicated.

What happens after activation?
Nothing changes on your site until you say which languages it runs in. Until then every address serves exactly what it served before.

Does it touch my existing content?
No. Translations are stored in the plugin’s own tables and laid over the original when a translated address is requested. The original post is never edited, copied or republished.

How do I install the plugin?
Go to WordPress → Plugins → Add New, upload the plugin, and activate it.

Where do I set the languages?
Open Mant Multilingual → Set up languages. The first field is the language your existing content is written in. Beneath it you add the languages you translate into, each with its own URL prefix.

Can I change the source language later?
Only while no translations exist. Once something is translated the source language is fixed, because every stored translation is tied to the original it was written against.

What happens if I change a prefix?
Translations and order languages are kept, but public addresses change. Nothing is redirected automatically, so update your links or set up redirects yourself.

Do I need pretty permalinks?
Yes. Language prefixes cannot be routed with plain permalinks. Under Settings → Permalinks, choose anything other than Plain.

Where do I translate?
Open the page in the block editor and click Translations in the toolbar. In the classic editor, and on products, the same fields appear in a Translations box below the content.

Why is the content split into many small fields?
Because a page is not one block of text. Each heading, paragraph, button and list is its own field beside the original it belongs to, so you translate wording and never markup. Blocks the field editor cannot read are named, so you can check them before publishing.

Does my translation break when I restyle the page?
No. What is stored is the wording, not the layout. When you change colours, spacing or the order of blocks in the original, the translation is served in the page’s current structure without being saved again.

What do Draft and Published mean?
One status applies to the whole translation. Draft is yours to work on, and visitors still see the original. Published is what visitors get under the language prefix.

What is the outdated notice?
It means the original text changed after this translation was saved. The published translation keeps being served, so nothing breaks; the notice is there to tell you it is worth another look.

How do I remove a translation?
Remove translation at the bottom of the panel deletes that language’s text and addresses for that one post. The original and the other languages are untouched.

Are titles, excerpts and addresses translated too?
Yes. Title, content and excerpt each have their own field, and a translated post is served under the translated address when you give it one.

How do I translate a menu?
Open Mant Multilingual → Navigation menus. Every menu the site can show is listed, with a link into its own Translations box.

Why do some menus say they have no wording of their own?
Because every item in them names a page. Those items follow the page: translate the page’s title and the menu says so too, in every language, without any work in the menu itself.

What about items whose wording was typed by hand?
Those are listed in the menu’s Translations box, one field each, and are translated there.

How do visitors change language?
Add the Language switcher block wherever you want it; a header template part is the usual place. It links to the current page in each language.

Can it show short codes instead of language names?
Yes. Select the block and set Display to Code, and it shows DE and EN instead of Deutsch and English.

Is there a shortcode?
Yes, for classic themes and widget areas:

Are products duplicated?
No. There is one product, with one price, one stock figure, one SKU and one set of downloads. Only the texts are translated: name, description, short description.

What language do order emails use?
The one the customer ordered in. The order remembers its language, and customer emails, notes and invoices are rendered in it. Mail to the shop owner stays in the admin language.

Does it work with HPOS and the block checkout?
Yes. Orders are only ever read and written through WooCommerce’s own CRUD, so the order language follows the order into whichever table holds it, and both the classic and the block checkout are covered.

Do I need WooCommerce?
No. The plugin works on a site without a shop and adds nothing until WooCommerce is there.

What do the URLs look like?
The source language keeps the addresses it always had. Each other language is served under its prefix: /de/about/ beside /about/.

What does the plugin output for search engines?
The right html lang for the language being served, a canonical pointing at that language’s own address, and hreflang links between the languages with x-default on the source.

Are translations in the sitemap?
Yes. The WordPress sitemaps gain a section per language, listing only translations that are published.

What about Yoast or Rank Math?
Their output is left to them, with the plugin supplying the language context so their tags describe the page being served.

Custom fields from other plugins
Fields other plugins add to a post are not in the translation editor. The editor says so on every screen rather than letting you believe they were covered.

Page builder content
Content stored by a page builder rather than as blocks is outside the field editor.

The wording of WordPress, themes and plugins
Buttons like Add to cart belong to WordPress, your theme and your plugins. Install their official language packs under Settings → General and they translate themselves.

The translation does not show
Check its status. A translation saved as Draft is deliberately not served; visitors get the original until it is Published.

A translated address returns a 404
Visit Settings → Permalinks and save once. That rebuilds the rewrite rules, which is what language prefixes route on.

The menu is still in the original language
Items that name a page follow that page, so translate the page’s title. Items with wording of their own are translated in the menu’s own Translations box.

Something looks half translated
Open the page’s Translations panel and look for fields still marked as not translated. Anything without a translation falls back to the original by design, so a page is never blank and never half broken.

What happens if I deactivate the plugin?
The site serves the original language exactly as before, and every stored translation is kept, waiting for the plugin to be switched on again.

What happens if I delete it?
Nothing of yours is deleted unless you asked for it. The plugin’s own tables are removed on uninstall only when Delete all data on uninstall has been turned on in the settings. Originals are never touched either way.

Does it send anything anywhere?
No. There are no external calls at all: no translation service, no licence server, no usage reporting. Everything the plugin stores stays in your own database.

Where do I get help?
Use the contact page and include your website address, what you expected, what happened, and a screenshot of the Translations panel for the page in question.