---
title: "Flavor CF7 — Contact Form 7 translation via the Flavor plugin"
description: "Translates CF7 labels, placeholders, select options, validation messages, and mail templates per locale via Flavor's string storage."
url: https://symonov.com/projects/flavor-cf7/
---

# flavor-cf7

Contact Form 7 integration for Flavor — translates labels, placeholders, options, validation messages, and mail templates.

**2026** · by **Serhii Symonov** · beta · `wordpress` `cf7` `i18n` `php`

## the problem

Contact Form 7 stores form markup in `post_content` — labels, placeholders, select options, and mail templates live outside the gettext/`.mo` pipeline. WPML and Polylang solve it by duplicating the entire form post per language. Sites using Flavor for content translation have no bridge to CF7 without falling back to one of those heavy plugins.

## the approach

A lightweight addon that hooks Flavor’s public filters to extend translation coverage to CF7:

- **Form labels / placeholders / select options** — translated via `Flv_Translator::translate_string()` and stored in Flavor’s String Translations table
- **Validation messages** — translated by intercepting CF7’s `wpcf7_messages` array
- **Mail templates** (subject, body, recipient overrides) — translated post-meta lookup against Flavor’s storage
- **Request language** — Flavor learns the form-submission language via the `_wpcf7_locale` field through the `flv/detect_request_language` filter
- **Form post type** — Flavor sees `wpcf7_contact_form` posts as `post_title`\-only (CF7 stores shortcodes in `post_content`, never to be translated)

Uses only Flavor’s public API. CF7 strings are auto-registered on save and become translatable from Flavor’s String Translations admin.

## stack

- WordPress 6.0+, PHP 8.0+
- Flavor (active) — public filter API
- Contact Form 7 (active)