What is the purpose of adding a .po file?

Question

I added the below code to the function.php of a .po file and finished localization and edited the webconfig.php to add Arabic language but nothing happened. I want to know what should happen. Will the site include the new language - in my situation Arabic, or what?

Now the website is in English and I want to add an Arabic version.

<?php load_theme_textdomain('themename', TEMPLATEPATH.'/language'); ?>

Answer 1

First, read this Codex page about translating WordPress.

You have to create a language file to put into your language directory, do this by following the next steps:

I assume you want to use poedit since you talk about a .po file

1. download poedit
2. File > new catalog
3. In the first tab, fill in the fields, the most important ones are
   • Language, in your case: ar
   • Plural Forms, set this to: nplurals=2; plural=n == 1 ? 0 : 1;
4. In the second tab, set the path to: ../ and add path: .
5. In the last tab, add the following values:
   • __
   • _e
   • _n
   • _x:2c,1
   • _xn
   • _ex
   • esc_attr__
   • esc_attr_e
   • esc_attr_x
   • esc_html__
   • esc_html_e
   • esc_html_x
   • _n_noop
   • _nx_noop
   • translate_nooped_plural
6. Save the catalog in your themes' languages directory as: ar.po
7. Poedit will search for translations and then show them
8. Translate the strings and save the file.

This .po file will contain all your translated strings wich WordPress will use to translate your added code.

To display WordPress itself in your language, download the language files from the Codex page and add them to your wordpress languages directory.

Then, in your wp-config.php, set the following line:

define( 'WPLANG', 'ar' );

Answer 2

I agree with @Mike regarding the purpose and general how to, I can just suggest that instead of using poedit, you can use a plugin called "codestyling localization" which enables editing the .po files directly from wordpress.

Also, make sure you create the appropriate .mo files, otherwise things won't be loaded.