BuddyPress and BuddyBoss turn your WordPress website into a social network, add forums, groups, and even offer memberships and courses. To translate sites built on these platforms, you’ll need WPML’s BuddyPress Multilingual glue plugin

BuddyPress is one of the original WordPress plugins that allows you to turn your site into a fully-functioning social network. It’s a simple, open-sourced option that has been a popular choice for many years. The BuddyPress Multilingual glue plugin allows you and, very importantly, the visitors of your site to have a consistent language experience. It ensures all pages display in the required language.

A translated BuddyPress site
BuddyBoss is built on BuddyPress, offering all the same features with a modern and fresh look. It also offers a premium version, which includes its own theme and even more functionality via the BuddyBoss Platform Pro plugin.

An example of a translated BuddyBoss news feed
On This Page
Getting Started
Translating Pages
Translating Other BuddyPress or BuddyBoss Texts
Translating Profile Fields
Translating Group Names and Descriptions
Known Issues
Getting Support
Getting Started
Start by installing and activating the following plugins:

WPML Multilingual CMS version 4.5 or above
WPML String Translation add-on
Up-to-date versions of BuddyPress or BuddyBoss
BuddyPress Multilingual add-on (also available on your WPML account’s Downloads page)
Please note: For BuddyPress Multilingual to work, your site’s language URL format needs to be set to use different languages in directories. You can find the language URL options by going to WPML → Languages and scrolling to the Language URL Format section.

If you’re new to WPML, check out our Getting Started Guide. It quickly walks you through different translation options you can use.

Translating BuddyPress and BuddyBoss Pages
When you install and activate BuddyPress or BuddyBoss, you’ll have a set of pages created automatically. You can easily translate these pages with WPML. You can let WPML translate pages automatically, send them to be translated by others, or do the translation yourself.

A backend list of translated default BuddyPress pages
Translating Other BuddyPress or BuddyBoss Texts
Like many other plugins and themes, BuddyPress and BuddyBoss include text that is not part of the standard Pages, Posts, or Taxonomy. We call these strings, and you can translate them using WPML’s String Translation add-on.

First, go to WPML → Theme and Plugins Localization. If you use BuddyPress or the BuddyBoss Platform, can the plugin. BuddyBoss Pro includes a theme and pro plugin you can scan for strings as well.

Scanning the BuddyBoss Platform and pro plugin for strings
Translating Profile Fields
BuddyPress and BuddyBoss both allow you to add profile fields to your social network members. Using WPML, you can translate these fields.

After creating the fields in your default language, click the Register fields button in the notice that appears on the Profile Fields page.

Registering fields for translation
Then, go to the WPML → String Translation page, look for those field names and values, and translate them.

Here’s an example of a profile field when translating it on the String Translation page.

Translating a profile field on the String Translation page
Translating Group Names and Descriptions
BuddyPress and BuddyBoss both allow admins and site users to create public, hidden, or private groups.

To translate a group’s name or description, go to WPML → String Translation and find the group content you created. Click the plus icon to add your translations.

Translating a group name and description
After translating the page, name and description, you will see the translated group on your site’s front-end:

A translated group
Known Issues
WPML works fine with this plugin, but sometimes there could be minor issues we're working on. This is expected as both plugins provide frequent updates.

Current unresolved issues:

BuddyPress – Profile fields are not translated on the frontend
You can also search all known issues including previously resolved issues for this plugin.