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How to Translate and Customize the WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Recovery Plugin

16 threads Sep 10, 2025 Plugin → Woocommerce cart abandonment recovery

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One of the most common challenges users face with the WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Recovery plugin is translating its text strings and customizing its shortcodes. This is especially important for store owners running non-English websites, where default English phrases like "No thanks," "there," and "Unsubscribe" can appear unprofessional or grammatically incorrect.

This guide explains why these translation issues occur and provides the most effective methods for customizing the plugin's text to match your site's language and branding.

Why Translation Can Be Difficult

The plugin's front-end text and email content are generated from specific code strings. While many of these strings are available for translation through the standard WordPress methods, some have historically been missing from the translation files or are output by shortcodes that don't allow for easy text customization within the email editor.

Common Solutions for Translation and Customization

1. Using Loco Translate

The most recommended method for translating plugin strings is to use the free Loco Translate plugin. This tool allows you to find and translate any text output by the Cart Abandonment plugin directly from your WordPress admin area.

How to use it:

  1. Install and activate Loco Translate.
  2. Navigate to Loco Translate → Plugins and select "WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Recovery."
  3. Choose your language and begin translating the available strings.

According to user reports and support threads, this method successfully translates phrases like "No thanks" and the subsequent confirmation message. The plugin's development team has also been actively adding missing strings to the translation template based on user feedback.

2. Contributing Translations on WordPress.org

For a more permanent, community-focused solution, you can contribute translations directly to the plugin's translation project on WordPress.org. This helps make the translations available for all users who use your language.

The translations are managed at translate.wordpress.org. Anyone with a WordPress.org account can suggest translations for approval.

3. Customizing the {{customer.firstname}} Fallback

The shortcode {{customer.firstname}} uses "there" as a fallback when a customer's name is not available. To change this, you can add a custom code snippet to your child theme's functions.php file:

add_filter( 'woo_ca_default_first_name', 'wcar_change_default_string');

function wcar_change_default_string( $string ){
    $string = 'Your Custom Text Here';
    return $string;
}

Replace Your Custom Text Here with the term you prefer (e.g., "customer," "friend," or a term in your language).

4. Customizing the Unsubscribe Link ({{cart.unsubscribe}})

The {{cart.unsubscribe}} shortcode outputs a full HTML link with the default text "Unsubscribe." It cannot be placed inside another link tag. If you need to customize its appearance or text, you have two options:

Option A: Translate the String
Use Loco Translate to find and translate the string "Unsubscribe" to your desired language.

Option B: Create a Custom Unsubscribe Link
If you need more control over the link's HTML, you can manually construct it. Several users have reported success with this method:

<a href="{{cart.checkout_url}}&unsubscribe=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Your Custom Link Text Here</a>

This manually created link will perform the same unsubscribe function while allowing you to fully control the text and styling.

Conclusion

While the WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Recovery plugin uses some default English text, it is highly customizable. For most users, the Loco Translate plugin provides the simplest and most effective way to translate all plugin strings. For more advanced customization of shortcode output, the provided code snippets and manual URL construction offer effective workarounds.

Before editing core files, always use a child theme and test changes on a staging site to ensure compatibility with your theme and other plugins.

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