What is the correct way to handle internationalization (i18n) in WordPress plugins, and what is the text domain’s role?

Question

WordPress Fundamental — Hard

What is the correct way to handle internationalization (i18n) in WordPress plugins, and what is the text domain’s role?

Accepted Answer

To handle internationalization in WordPress plugins, developers should wrap translatable strings in i18n functions with the plugin's text domain. This ensures that the correct .po/.mo translation files are loaded for the language. Using PHP's gettext functions directly or relying on automatic translations are not the correct approaches.