How important is theme translation..?

Hi guys, I saw a few themes with translation files included and was wondering how important is it for the buyers to have this feature? And I presume this feature is only required for the wordpress themes and not site themes…

Not so much but more is better

As a buyer / user with only multilingual sites & projects, I only consider themes WPML ready… witch reduces to 1% of the Themeforest WP offer…

It is really important! More than 50% of the buyers translate their themes.

@AgenciaOlhares .. i don’t agree with you. A lot of theme on here work with WPML , you just have to know yourself around the plugin to make it work correctly. If the theme can be translated correctly, then chances are than it will work with WPML . For example, i didn’t test my latest theme with the plugin, but all the buyers who tried to make a WPML site with it, managed to do it correctly.

So on the original question..i think that it’s a must to make the theme translation ready!

Thanks @RubenBristan for your answer, but… My experience is that not every localized theme works with WPML easily, you just discover if it works or not when adding translations, languages, so from the user/buyer point of view, it´s a bit cruel to invest in a theme, to realize after days of tries & work that it won’t work even if you pay someone for customization… The best practice for folks like me that have only multilingual projects is when the theme author announces the full compatibility as do Kriesi (what an awesome multilingual framework!!), Unisphere (I will try it soon)...

By the way I loved your Wowway theme but you don´t list the existence of a .mo/.po file on the features list…? Did someone make it work with WPML ? If so could you send me the link? Thanks a lot.

Also, it seems that the WPML team is ready to help designers : http://themeforest.net/forums/thread/wpmls-goglobal-program-help-turn-your-themes-multilingualready/42735

AgenciaOlhares said
Thanks @RubenBristan for your answer, but… My experience is that not every localized theme works with WPML easily, you just discover if it works or not when adding translations, languages, so from the user/buyer point of view, it´s a bit cruel to invest in a theme, to realize after days of tries & work that it won’t work even if you pay someone for customization… The best practice for folks like me that have only multilingual projects is when the theme author announces the full compatibility as do Kriesi (what an awesome multilingual framework!!), Unisphere (I will try it soon)...

By the way I loved your Wowway theme but you don´t list the existence of a .mo/.po file on the features list…? Did someone make it work with WPML ? If so could you send me the link? Thanks a lot.

Also, it seems that the WPML team is ready to help designers : http://themeforest.net/forums/thread/wpmls-goglobal-program-help-turn-your-themes-multilingualready/42735

If a theme is coded properly, respecting the WordPress structure and best practices WPML should work fine in most of the cases.

Problems can be there when a theme is too much dependent on theme options for contents (page composers, home contents in the options and not in the page, etc…). If the author didn’t take care about translation in its options then some problems can exist when translating.

Parker