Translating a pager string

You are doing it wrong

• You should translate the HTML string, not the function

• When passing strings into functions, like what you are doing, you should use __() which returns the translated string. _e() would echo the string and you would get the raw text and the modified text on output

  Example of correct usage:

  get_next_posts_link( __( 'Older posts' ), $the_query->max_num_pages );
  

  or

  next_posts_link( __( 'Older posts' ), $the_query->max_num_pages );
  

• _e() echos a string, so doing the following

  next_posts_link( _e( 'Older posts' ), $the_query->max_num_pages );
  

  would be wrong as you would get the following output

  Older postsNext Page »

  instead of

  Older posts

• Instead of doing echo get_next_posts_link(), you can just do next_posts_link(). next_posts_link() is just a wrapper for echo get_next_posts_link()