Multi language menus

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  egoizueta · Member · Jun 21, 2013 at 12:26 pm

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  Hi,

  I’m starting a new WP site using Twenty Thirteen theme and I would like to have a different menu for multiple languages.

  I don’t mind re-creating (and translating the content of the pages) but I can’t figure out how to have a menu in English and a menu in Spanish.

  Is there any way you could recommend to have a Spanish main page (with the menu in Spanish) and an English main page (with the menu in English)?

  Many thanks in advance for the help

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  jackiedana · Member · Jun 21, 2013 at 4:42 pm

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  Hi there,

  To accomplish this on WordPress.com, you’ll either need to set up two versions of your blog, one in Spanish and one in English, or include English and Spanish versions of each page/post.

  You can set up a menu which links to different pages by using the Custom Menus option under Appearance > Menus. One idea would be to have one language as the primary menu option and offer a drop-down menu option that links to the same page in the second language. Not ideal, but it might work depending on your audience.

  Menus

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  egoizueta · Member · Jun 26, 2013 at 9:17 am

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  Thanks for the response Jackie. A couple of questions:

  1) I’ve tried creating 2 menus but I only see the my ‘default’ menu on my blog. What do you mean by ‘offer a drop-down menu option that links to the same page in the second language’?

  2) I’ve tried searching but can’t find any. Do you know if there is any Free or Premium multi-lingual Theme available?

  Many thanks in advance

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  jackiedana · Member · Jun 26, 2013 at 4:14 pm

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  Hi egoizueta,

  My idea for the menu was to have one menu with drop downs in a second language

  So:

  Woman
  -Senorita (in drop down)

  or vice versa.

  It’s clumsy but it might work if you didn’t have a lot of pages/menu items but would become unwieldy fast if this site had a lot of content.

  Other than that, WordPress.com does not offer multi-language functionality at this time. It may be worth looking into a self-hosted WordPress site using the software at WordPress.org so that you could utilize one of a number of third-party plugins to add multiple language support.

  This document will better explain your options if you go the self-hosted route:
  http://codex.wordpress.org/Multilingual_WordPress

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  egoizueta · Member · Jun 26, 2013 at 4:45 pm

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  Thanks for the response Jakie,

  WordPress.org is not an option due to the technical skills needed.

  Still not sure why WordPress.com let’s me create multiple menus (which is great) but I can’t find a way to load a second menu. Is there any way to ‘somehow’ load the the second menu defined in the Appearance / Menu (even if it was a different URL)?

  Many thanks in advance.

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  jackiedana · Member · Jun 26, 2013 at 5:52 pm

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  Hi egoizueta,

  How many menus you can use is dependent on the theme, and whether or not a second menu has been activated.

  Here’s a partial list of themes that allow more than one custom menu:
  Comet
  Nuntius
  Academica
  Imbalance2
  Blaskan
  Yoko
  Oxygen
  Able
  Vostok
  Mixfolio
  Beach
  Enterprise
  Shaan
  Sight
  Simpla

  There may be others as well.

  You could alternately use the Custom Menu widget to show different menus (one per widget). You can find those under Appearance > Widgets.