Title: _e () function – string is not translated
Last modified: December 2, 2019

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# _e () function – string is not translated

 *  [user02122019](https://wordpress.org/support/users/user02122019/)
 * (@user02122019)
 * [6 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/_e-function-string-is-not-translated/)
 * Hello guys,
 * im using the following code in the woocommerce plugin, under loop/no-products-
   found.php
 *     ```
       ?>
       <p class="woocommerce-info"><?php _e( 'Unfortunately no matching articles were found online. Write us your request, we will contact you immediately if we can offer you a suitable article from our offline network: <a href="mailto:mail@eiaa.eu">mail@eiaa.eu</a>', 'woocommerce'); ?></p>
       ```
   
 * my issue is that this string with _e is not translated. It appears in english
   all the time. The original code, before I changed it, looked like this
 *     ```
       <p class="woocommerce-info"><?php esc_html_e( 'Unfortunately no matching articles were found online. Write us your request, we will contact you immediately if we can offer you a suitable article from our offline network: mail@eiaa.eu', 'woocommerce' ); ?></p>
       ```
   
 * This one was translated into German automatically.
 * What am I doing wrong?

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  Moderator [bcworkz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bcworkz/)
 * (@bcworkz)
 * [6 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/_e-function-string-is-not-translated/#post-12198009)
 * You cannot change anything in the passed string and expect it to still translate.
   Translation is managed by exact string matches. To translate custom text, you
   either need to define your own plugin’s textdomain and generate the appropriate
   gettext files or filter through “gettext” to override the usual gettext translation
   routines.
 * BTW, it’s not advisable to not escape output in some manner in the way esc_html_e()
   does.
 *  Thread Starter [user02122019](https://wordpress.org/support/users/user02122019/)
 * (@user02122019)
 * [6 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/_e-function-string-is-not-translated/#post-12198129)
 * My problem is that I need the link inside this esc_html_e to be a clickable link,
   that is why i changed it to a _e function instead esc_html_e
 * Regarding your actual post, does it mean that the plugin has fixed strings for
   another language? So I can find where those strings are located and change them
   too, right?
 *  Moderator [bcworkz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bcworkz/)
 * (@bcworkz)
 * [6 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/_e-function-string-is-not-translated/#post-12198992)
 * Only if you have the gettext utilities installed to re-compile the language files.
   The file that is used to actually do the translation is a compressed machine 
   readable file which you cannot make sense of. You would actually be editing a
   human readable form of this file, which is then compiled into the machine readable
   file. The other problem with doing this is when you update the plugin your changes
   will be overwritten and you’ll need to reapply your changes.
 * Your viable options are as I said earlier. You’re right about escaping, if the
   output is all hard coded and not sourced from the DB there is no need to escape
   output.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘_e () function – string is not translated’ is closed to new replies.

 * In: [Developing with WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/wp-advanced/)
 * 3 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [bcworkz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bcworkz/)
 * Last activity: [6 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/_e-function-string-is-not-translated/#post-12198992)
 * Status: not resolved

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