How to Translate Menus with WPML

Are you struggling to find a way to translate your homepage menu when setting up a multilingual blog with WPML? I will summarize two methods for WPML menu translation.

Using WPML Menu Translation Management Features

With WPML, you can manage menus separately for each language through the **“menu translation feature.”**

📌 Step-by-step Setup Method:

1. Navigate to WordPress Admin > Appearance > Menus
2. Select the desired menu at the top (e.g., Primary Menu)
3. Check the language selection tab at the top right
   • For example: Menu Language: Korean, with a button like + Add English on the right
4. Add and translate a new menu for each language
   • Set the menu name, items, URL, etc., according to the respective language
5. Link the language-specific menus to widgets or theme locations
   • For example: Set Primary Menu (English) to display on the English site and Primary Menu (Korean) to display on the Korean site

In other words, using the menu shown in the image below, you can designate menus separately for each language.

This method is good when you want to have different types of menus for each language, but it can be a bit cumbersome.

Translating Menu Item Text Only through WPML String Translation

This method is useful when you need to change only the menu names or texts while keeping the menu structure the same.

📌 Usage Conditions:

• When the items included in the menu are objects that can be translated with WPML, such as pages, posts, categories, etc.
• When you want to display the same link structure but with different menu names

📌 Setup Method:

1. Go to WPML > String Translation
2. Search for the domain admin_texts_nav_menu
3. When the text of the menu items appears, translate it into each language

In my case, I select the group named ‘header top menu’ used as the menu group as shown in the image below.

The example below shows how to translate the menu item ‘AI 매매 수익율‘ in the COOSS.NET menu for each language.

The language-specific menus have been set up as shown below.

In conclusion, I have summarized the “WPML menu translation method.”