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Creating Multilingual Filters Using FacetWP and WPML

Kathy Banach
Updated
September 19, 2023

FacetWP allows you to add advanced filtering to the listings on your website. We’ll show you how to create multilingual filters using WPML.

On This Page:

Getting Started

Start by installing and activating the following plugins:

If you’re new to WPML, check out our Getting Started Guide. It quickly walks you through different translation options you can use.

To learn how to set up FacetWP, read through the documentation in their Help Center.

Translating Custom Listing Pages

With WPML, you can choose from two translation modes:

  • The Translate Everything Automatically mode makes it possible to translate pages, posts, custom post types, products and more as you add or edit them.
  • The Translate What You Choose mode lets you choose what to translate, and who will translate it. Choose from translating content yourself, assigning it to individual translators, or hiring a professional translation agency.

FacetWP allows you to create custom listing templates via its in-built Listing Builder. You can then add the template shortcode to any page to display the custom listing. 

In our example, we created a custom products page and added the template shortcode to it. You can also create a template to list posts, pages, or custom post types.

Custom products page on the front-end

To translate the page where you have added a shortcode by yourself:

  1. Edit the page. In the Language box, click the plus icon next to the language you want to translate your page into.
Clicking the plus icon to translate the page
  1. You will be taken to the Advanced Translation Editor. If you have translation credits, you can click the Translate automatically button to load the machine translation. If not, enter the translations for each line manually and click Complete once you’re done.
Translating the page in the Advanced Translation Editor

Note that the shortcode is not visible in the Advanced Translation Editor. This is because WPML automatically copies the shortcode to your secondary language page.

This is what the translated page looks like on the front-end:

Translated custom products page on the front-end

Translating Facets Created With FacetWP

FacetWP allows you to create facets, also known as custom filters. You can then add these facets to a listings page.

In the example below, we created a product category filter and added it to our custom products page.

Custom product filter added to a custom products page

To translate the facet, you need to translate the product categories. WPML allows you to translate categories and tags in different ways. To find your preferred method, see our documentation about translating post categories and custom taxonomies.

For the purpose of this tutorial, we will translate our product categories from a central taxonomy menu:

  1. Go to WPML → Taxonomy Translation and select the taxonomy you’d like to translate from the drop-down menu. In our example, it is Product categories.
  2. Click the plus icon to add your translation and then hit enter to save it.
Translating product categories from a central taxonomy menu

Depending on the facet type, you may also need to translate the custom fields that appear in it.

Here is our translated product category filter on the front-end:

Translated custom product category filter on the front-end

Translating Texts From Themes, Plugins, and Other Places

Besides the content coming from your posts and pages, there are additional texts coming from other places. These texts can be found in admin screens, widget titles, and more.

To learn how to translate these texts, see our guide to String Translation.  

Known Issues

WPML works fine with this plugin, but sometimes there could be minor issues we're working on. This is expected as both plugins provide frequent updates.

Current unresolved issues:

You can also search all known issues including previously resolved issues for this plugin.

Getting Help

Having difficulties using FacetWP on your WPML-powered site? Visit our support forum.