Skip Navigation
Updated
September 30, 2022

WPML allows you to have different date formats for different languages on your site. You can also use this method for using different timestamp formats.

In the following example, we will be setting different date formats for English and French versions of a blog post.

English version of the post
English version of the post
English version of the post
French version of the post

To do this, we will need to first set the date format for our default language. Then, we can set the format for any secondary languages.

Set the date format for the default language

Options for date format are located on the SettingsGeneral page. You can choose one of the predefined values or enter your own format.

Selecting the date format for the default language
Selecting the date format for the default language

Set the date format for secondary languages

Once you set default date format, you can set the date format for your other languages. Use the following steps to do this:

    1. Go to the WPMLString Translation page. Scroll down and click the Translate texts in admin screens link.
Translate texts in admin screens
Navigating to the Admin Texts Translation page
    1. On the Admin Texts Translation page, search for and select the checkboxes for the date_format and time_format fields. Then click Add to String Translation.
Searching for date_format strings
Searching for date_format strings
  1. Go back to WPMLString Translation, and you will see admin_texts_time_format and admin_texts_date_format at the top of the list of strings. If you don’t see them at the top of the list, you can search for them using the text search field.
  2. In the Select strings within domain dropdown select admin_texts_time_format and translate the time format.
  3. Translate the strings as normal. In the example, we translated the date format into French as d/m/Y.

    Translating the date format string
    Translating the date format string

Once you are done with translating these strings, your site’s front-end will display dates in the format you chose for each language.