How to uninstall a language in WordPress

‘New translations available’

When you open the admin console in WordPress, you will see at the top whether there are updates for your website. Often these are plugin updates or WordPress updates, but it can also be annoying translation updates.

It’s important to keep your website up-to-date, but the translation updates come on a daily basis?

How to uninstall a language in WordPress
How to uninstall a language in WordPress

I thought to myself why do I actually have the language Dutch when the console is in English? I also have no other users on my blog, so where does Dutch come from?

Probably because I’m Dutch..

There are all kinds of tutorials on the internet, mainly on WordPress Stack Exchange, but not one post has a clear step-by-step plan with screenshots included.


Let’s remove a language from WordPress

Before we start we need a few things:

  • An FTP client such asĀ FileZilla
  • An FTP account with editor rights

Log in via the FTP client and navigate to the website directory. You can recognize this by the wp- files.

How to uninstall a language in WordPress
How to uninstall a language in WordPress

WordPress interface languages

Navigate to wp-content > languages directory.

Here you will see all the languages you can choose from in the WordPress admin interface. You can safely delete all of them.

How to uninstall a language in WordPress
How to uninstall a language in WordPress

Plugin supported languages

Now navigate to the plugins directory as in the screenshot below.

How to uninstall a language in WordPress

Here you will see all the languages Plugins install. You can safely delete all of them.

How to uninstall a language in WordPress
How to uninstall a language in WordPress

Themes supported languages

Navigate back to the languages directory and open the themes folder:

How to uninstall a language in WordPress
How to uninstall a language in WordPress

Here you will see all the languages you can choose from in the WordPress admin interface. These are languages your themes support. You can safely delete all of them as well.

How to uninstall a language in WordPress
How to uninstall a language in WordPress

In the updates tab you will now see the below message for Translations:

Your translations are all up to date
Your translations are all up to date

Banner image credits

Banner Image by simplu27 from Pixabay.

Published by

Bas Wijdenes

My name is Bas Wijdenes and I work as a PowerShell DevOps Engineer. In my spare time I write about interesting stuff that I encounter during my work.

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