Multilingual sites: WPML and Polylang

HappenBoard works with WPML and Polylang, the two main plugins for multilingual WordPress sites. You translate an event like a page, and each language shows its own version, while every translation shares the same seats.

There is nothing to set up in HappenBoard. It ships a configuration file that both plugins read by themselves.

What you can translate

• Events, venues and organizers.
• Event categories and tags.

Booking types are not translatable, on purpose: one booking type serves every language, so its availability and its bookings stay in one place. Its title and description are shown as you wrote them.

Translate an event

1. Translate your venues and organizers first. A translated event then shows its venue and organizer in the same language.
2. Create the event in your default language, with its dates, capacity and venue.
3. Add a translation with your multilingual plugin, as you would for a page: the language box of the editor with Polylang, or WPML’s translation tools.
4. Translate the title, the description and the excerpt, then publish.

The dates, the repeat rule, the capacity, the event format, the meeting link and the linked venue and organizer are copied to every translation. Change them on the default language version.

A venue name or address typed directly on the event, without a linked venue, is translated with the event.

What visitors see

• The Calendar, the event lists and grids and the Event Query Loop show the events of the current language only.
• A translated event shows the translation of its venue and organizer, when one exists. Otherwise it shows the original.
• The iCal feed lists the events of your default language. With Polylang, add ?lang=fr to its address for French.

HappenBoard does not include translations yet, so its own wording, such as buttons and form labels, shows in English. It switches to your visitors’ language once a HappenBoard translation for that language is installed on your site.

What the translations of an event share

The translations of an event are one event with several pages. They share its seats:

• Registrations made on any translation count against one capacity: the one set on the default language version, or each date’s on a recurring event.
• Every translation shows the same number of seats remaining.
• An email address registered on one translation is already registered on the others.

Each registration keeps the language it was made in. Its emails, confirmation and reminders included, are sent in the language of the translation the attendee registered on. Booking emails are sent in the language of the page the booking was made on. In both cases, that language must be installed in WordPress.

Find your attendees in every language

On the Attendees screen, open the list of one event. It shows the attendees of all its translations, with a Language column. Untick All languages to see only the attendees of that translation. The CSV export follows the same choice.

With HappenBoard Pro

HappenBoard Pro applies the same rule to tickets: the translations of an event sell the same tickets, from the same seats.

• Add the tickets once, on the default language version. The other translations sell those tickets, and their Tickets panel links to the translation that holds them.
• A translation that already had tickets of its own keeps selling them, with their own seats.
• Each order is made on the page’s translation, so its emails and its PDF ticket are in the buyer’s language.
• At the door, one event in the check-in scanner admits the ticket holders of every translation.
• The Orders screen and its CSV export show each order’s language.
• The labels, help texts and choices of your custom fields can be translated in WPML’s string translation or in Polylang’s string translations screen.

To choose the language of emails from a field of the registration form instead, see emails in the attendee’s language.

Next steps

• Capacity and available seats: set the seats every translation shares.
• Managing attendees: work with the attendee list.
• The iCal feed: give each language its own feed.
• Emails in the attendee’s language: let attendees choose their email language.