Knowledgebase
How to install and enable languages in PrestaShop
PrestaShop comes prepackaged with five languages. To disable or enable these languages, go to the Tools tab of your store's backend and then to the Languages sub-tab.
You can also import other languages. The translations section of the official PrestaShop site offers many other language packs. To install a new language, click on your backend's Tools tab and then on the Translations sub-tab. From the drop-down menu in the section Add/Update a language select the language you want to install and click on the button Add or update a language. PrestaShop will do everything automatically. The languages that you can select from the drop-down menu are the ones that you can also download from the official site.
On the Translations sub-tab page there's also a section labeled Import a language pack manually. You can also use this section to install the language. In this case you need to have the language archive downloaded to your local computer. Then just click on the Browse button to locate it and on the Import button to upload it to your PrestaShop hosting account.
After you import the language you should get a message at the top of the Translations sub-tab page. If the message informs you that the language was added successfully, you don't have to do anything else. If it says that the language was added but not created, this means that probably you use a theme other than the default prestashop theme. You have to copy the PHP file for the particular language (e.g. en.php for English) from /themes/prestashop/lang to /themes/custom_theme/lang. The themes folder is in the root PrestaShop directory on your hosting account.
If you need to upload a flag image for the language and change other settings, you can do this from the Languages sub-tab of the admin panel's Tools tab. Simply click on the edit icon for the particular language. You can also use the Add language button on the Languages sub-tab page to add a new language and configure its options. If you do that first, then you have to import the language archive from the Translations sub-tab.
For some more details and screenshots check out our PrestaShop Languages Tutorial.