More than half of all WordPress sites (50.5%) are using translations for non-English speaking locales. It’s only natural that these users would want the ability to register, log in, and reset their passwords in their own languages. A new language switcher on the login screen has finally made its way into core, four years after the ticket was opened.
WordPress 5.9 will introduce a new dropdown on the login screen that will display all the languages that are currently installed. (New languages can be added under the Settings > General screen in the admin.)
In a dev note for the new features, WordPress Core Committer Jb Audras demonstrated how developers can filter the default arguments for the languages dropdown. This might be useful for sites that have dozens of languages installed where administrators only wish to display a handful in the dropdown.
WordPress 5.9 beta 3 was released last week. In addition to the new language switcher, the latest beta also includes the following:
- Editor: Add FSE infrastructure from Gutenberg plugin into Core (#54335).
- Formatting: Allow PDFs to embedded as objects (#54261)
- REST API: Add navigation areas REST API endpoint from Gutenberg plugin (#54393)
- Themes: A fix for the Live Preview button bug (#54578)
RC1 is expected January 4, 2022, which will bring a code freeze for both Gutenberg and core and a hard string freeze. Contributors are also aiming to have the field guide with dev notes published at this time.
If you have time to contribute during the upcoming holiday weeks, the 5.9 release team welcomes more testing for bugs. Anne McCarthy has published a detailed guide to testing the full-site editing features that are anticipated in 5.9. Testers should check against the list of known issues before reporting bugs on Trac or in the Alpha/Beta forums.
Before 2021, I used to work as a translator on a regular basis, and one of the most common assignments I received from companies were the translations of basic sign up/log in/password setting or recovery procedures on their websites. From this perspective, the feature seems to me as a natural evolution.