In WPML 4.5.9, we’re addressing a few issues between WPML and its Advanced Translation Editor. We need your feedback, to make sure that we’re covering everything that you need.
WPML 4.5.9 is now available
We released WPML 4.5.9, which includes fixes to the issues mentioned in this post, as well as improvements to the Translation Jobs and Translations Queue pages. Read more about it in our announcement post.
Here are the specific scenarios we are aware of and currently handling:
After site migration or changing the site URL, the site action notice doesn’t appear.
This causes a communication error between the Advanced Translation Editor and WPML. The Advanced Translation Editor doesn’t open or translations don’t save. You may see an error message: “WPML tried to translate this page three times and failed” or “WPML didn’t manage to translate this page.”
Before saving and completing a translation in the Advanced Translation Editor, someone makes a change to the page or post in the default language.
In-progress translations are not saved. You need to re-translate the page or post.
A page or post has already been translated, and you later join sentences and re-translate in the Advanced Translation Editor.
After updating the default content, the joined sentences are missing their translations or the segmentation is broken.
When you translate a page or post manually using the native WordPress Editor, then later try to translate using the Advanced Translation Editor.
Instead of the Advanced Translation Editor opening, it is only a blank screen with a URL ending with ?ateJobCreationError=102&jobId=1.
Upcoming Release: WPML 4.6
Our developers are working on WPML 4.6 now and expect to release it in September. It will include all major fixes mentioned here, plus some great features including:
An all-new language switcher block
Improvements to the workflow for using automatic translation on multiple pages or posts in bulk
Improvements to the Translation Jobs and Translations Queue interfaces
And more!
Is There Anything Else We Should Include?
We want to be sure WPML 4.6 includes fixes to all recent issues with the Advanced Translation Editor. If there’s a problem you’ve experienced that isn’t on the list above, please open a support ticket (if you haven’t already) and share the link with us in the comments below.
I will be reading all the comments and sharing them with our development team!
How can we make WPML better for you?
Share your thoughts and comments about our plugin, documentation, or videos by booking a Zoom call with Agnes, our Client Advocate. Your feedback matters and helps us improve.
77 Responses to “Upcoming Improvements to WPML’s Advanced Translation Editor”
In the advanced translation editor, my Advanced Custom Fields are repeated two, sometimes three times, it looks very messy and confusing for our clients. I reached out to WPML support and was told that this is an issue with ACF. It would be great if you could work together to find out how this can be resolved.
Great to see that you’re continuing to improve WPML!
Hi Michael – Can you provide a link to your support ticket? I can mention this to our compatibility team.
Hello I’m having an issue with the reply mail to clients after they paid in the appropriate language for example when they’re on the site in the French language when checking out playing after the confirmation email that is still for the appointment is not translate it to the French language
Hi Deborah – You should be able to translate these emails using String Translation. If you would like a supporter to look into it with you, you can start a chat with one here: https://wpml.org/forums/forum/english-support/
Hi,
WPML is not translating ACF custom fields… I have installed all necessary add-once but it seems translation fields are blank… do I need to do something extra?
Hi Rafal – When translating ACF fields, you first have to set the translation preferences. Please check out our documentation about translating ACF fields with WPML and see if that helps. Otherwise, our supporters can help look into it with you!
Hello Rafal,
ACF works with WPML but indeed it’s not easy to figure out the correct setup on yourown especialy if you use diffrent kinds of fields and your are doing it for the first time. We are currenlty working to improve here (both the documentation, we might have some vidoes etc). Please open a ticket on our support forum and one of our supporters will check your site to see what causes issues in your specific case.
Hi there, when I translate content with YOAST seo plugin, I find that the %title% tag doesn’t display correctly, and instead will come out like this “| text” when it should come out like this “text1 | text”
The text1 part is the page title, so at the start of the line I just get the title.
I also get a lot of stability issues when you have 1000+ pages.
Hi Mike – Did you try following our documentation about translating page SEO attributes? If it still doesn’t work for you, please let our support team know and add a link to your support ticket here so I can follow up!
Hi Mike – Just wanted to follow up here. We were able to reproduce the issue and we’ll work on a fix, though I can’t guarantee a timeline. Thank you for bringing it to our attention!
It would be nice to have internal links translated automatically.
Going through all internal links across translated pages in order to modify them is really time consuming, and as a result it discourages from undertaking new translations.
Hello – Have you tried going to WPML → Settings, scrolling to “Translate Link Targets” and clicking “Scan and adjust links”? If that doesn’t work, please check with our support team and share the link to the ticket here.
Hi, currently all Gutenberg strings get stored in string translations, and it is not possible to clean those out by domain as it is the case with other string domains. If we are not using the advanced translation editor, we do not want the strings cluttering up string translations and the database. A feature request has been submitted for this.
Thank you for your comment, Ben. I will share this with our development team.
Yes, please do something about this. +999
Hi Kristian & Ben – I just confirmed that our WPML team has this on their radar. I can’t guarantee any timelines, but there is a ticket to address it.
A big disadvantage of the editor is that changes made directly on the individual page are not synchronized with the translation. If later changes are made in the editor, the changes made directly in the page are overwritten.
Another disadvantage of the Advanced Editor is that it is no longer possible to access the HTML code directly.
Hello, I am using WPML with Tutor LMS Pro, and the pages within my theme dashboard are not being translated to the other languages of the page (Spanish and Polish), instead, 404 pages were created.
The only thing translated in the dashboard (user section) is the page of my profile and the dashboard page itself.
Thank you and kind regards,
Joaquin
Hi Joaquin – Tutor LMS Pro is only compatible when you translate it manually (it is not compatible with the Advanced Translation Editor). Please check out Tutor LMS’s documentation about how to translate with WPML here: https://docs.themeum.com/tutor-lms/addons/wpml/
Hello Allison,
Thank you for your prompt reply.
But the documentation was only for Courses, lessons, quizzes, and assignments.
And I was referring to the user section. Once you logged in you have your account, profile, etc… these are pages that are not overwritten with the original, there are just 404 pages. Will I be able to translate it with WPML?
Hi Joaquin – Just to follow up here, our compatibility teach reached out to Tutor LMS. They said they just released the Tutor LMS 2.0.7 and that full compatibility with WPML is expected to be released in the next update (2.0.8).
Hi,
1) The addition in the glossary (general) is not very UX friendly. After adding the main language term, you must then go to the last page to add a translation then it returns to page 1 and you have to go back to the last page to add the translation of the second language (etc) -> it’s really annoying when you have a big glossary
2) When adding an entry in the glossary from the ATE, it should also be possible to add the translation for the other languages
3) The possibility of adding additional blocks on the translated articles (WP editor) or exclude added blocks and that it does not overwrite them when reopening the ATE to translate the new entries
For us, these 3 features would make our life easier!
Thanks,
Hello – Thank you for your comments! I will share these with our UX designers.
I had immense problems with my Flothemes website although they explicit recommend using WPML for multilingual sites. With the phenomenal help of your support team it turned I could not use the advance translation at all. The manual process, however, is quite failure-prone in order to ensure that all parts were included. Galleries with photos were vanishing altogether when duplicating the page for the second language. So up to now I don’t have correctly translated ALT text for my images which as a photography business is an important downside harming my SEO.
Hi Chris – Thanks for your comment. We have not been able to confirm compatibility with Flothemes. If you have been in contact with them, please encourage the authors to join our Go Global program so we can assist them with compatibility.
My issues we regarding my other site, which is a close duplicate of this site – https://stopmalaria.it – which does still have WPML.
Upon updating WPML on my other site (https://sostegnoadistanza.eu), it simply deleted the plugin. I’ve never seen that before. All my translation work was gone, and since this action was a sign of a major bug, I didn’t risk reinstalling it and used another translator plugin.
I use the Salient theme which uses the WP Bakery builder, and WPML also caused the theme’s front end editor to not work. Overall it caused issues on my site. I’m afraid to update the Stop site’s WPML plugin now because I don’t want all my work to disappear.
Hi Deanna – Updating WPML should not delete it from your site. Also, deleting the WPML plugin does not cause you to lose your translations, as the translations are stored in your site’s database. Our support team can help investigate this with you: https://wpml.org/forums/forum/english-support/
One issue I am having every single time: When I open ATE from WordPress (click on the edit button), I get a blank page, then I have to refresh the page to get the ATE editor. This is pretty inconvenient.
Another thing that would be great is if ATE could automatically translate the links to point to the translated content. Every time I edit a translation in ATE, I need to go back to settings and translate all link targets, which is highly inconvenient.
Hi Baptiste – When you see the blank screen, do you notice ?ateJobCreationError=102 in the URL? If so, it’s one of the scenarios described above that we are working on. If you don’t see that in the URL, could you please open a support ticket and share the link here so we can look into it further?
Thank you for your feature request as well. I’ll share it with our development team.
Hi Allison,
No, there are no errors in the URL (the latest URL was https://e.ate.wpml.org/dashboard?id=35678304&language=en). I just tried, and I had to refresh the page three times to get something. And before you ask, I have tried waiting, but even after an hour, the page is still blank.
I won’t open a support ticket, it takes way too much time to deal with your support, and every time I have to create a staging site and gives you tons of access.
Hi Baptiste – Though it’s a bit more involved, a supporter would be able to investigate the problem and escalate it properly to be fixed. In the meantime, you can check these four things which might solve the issue before you need to contact a supporter: https://wpml.org/faq/checklist-before-opening-a-ticket-in-wpml-support/
Hi,
our 2 biggest issues:
A. we used the automatic translation and let a translation service check and correct this automatic translation. We imported their texts with XLIFF files.
The imported texts didn’t appear in the advanced editor and we had to change to the classic editor. it’s wasn’t any longer possible to use the automatic translation, which is a big issue for us. We don’t want to reach out to a translation service for every small text change. We hope it will be improved a next update. If we had known that before working with WPML, we would have chosen another plugin or worked in a different way.
B. After changing the site URL (using plugin better search replace), most image URLs couldn’t be automatically changed. There wasn’t any site action notice and I have to change hundreds of media links manually. Support can’t help either.
I hope you can improve some of that.
We were very disappointed with all the workflow issues we had with your plugin.
Nathalie
Thank you for the detailed comments and the links to your tickets, Karl! I will follow up with our developers about these issues.
I have really a lot of issues with the WPML since I’m developing a 39-language site. However, the really great issue for me right now is described here: https://wpml.org/forums/topic/the-ate-adds-a-space-before-every-segment-inside-a-paragraph-in-chinese/. I’d like to give you just an example to show how big it is for me: I have just realised that I spent for nothing a lot of time changing manually date formats for different countries (I have around two hunded dates in tables on some pages), i.e. 01.01.2022 for by base language were changed to 01/01/2022 for English, French and 7 more, 1. 1. 2022 for five Balkan languages, 01-01-2022 for Dutch, 2022-01-01 for Lithuanian and Chinese, 2022. 01. 01. for Hungarian. All these changes are lost. Because after any (unrelated) change of an original page I lose all manually added translations if that page is a grandchild (or deeaper) one. Just for information, when a date is the only content of a segment to be translated, it may be translated only ‘manually’, via the search box. However, such kind of manual translations of grandchild (an so on) pages made in the ATE does not survive any change of an original page. Manually translated URLs in Unicode with language-specific hashtags (the WPML doesn’t convert them automatically) are to be lost on grandchild pages as well.
I was not talking about dated of page publication or smth like that. I was talking about dates in texts on pages, more spesifically, in tables in my case. The ATE doesn’t understand that there are dates. It sees only numbers (with dots, dashes, slashes). Since there are only numbers in a segment, the ATE doesn’t register such segments for translation. I may translate them only manually, via the search box. I tried to put my dates inside date-tag, but the ATE still sees them as numbers only(( Anyway, URLs with hashes – are another problem (as weel as absolutely any manually added translation).
Thank you for the clarification, Oleg. I will share this with our developers.
I faced some problems in the Advanced translator editor, when I send languages to be translated in bulk, sometimes it’s sent twice! and I end up with huge number of jobs.
Hello – If you haven’t already, please open a support ticket about this and share the link here. This is definitely something I would like to follow up on.
It should be great, if you can choose a different language as the source of the strings.
Example:
German is the main language and EN a translation.
When translating to FR or ES, I would love to choose EN and not the main language German.
No actually I mean the Advanced Translation Manager. I would like to change the origninal language on the left side.
I understand now, thank you for clarifying Gökhan. WPML only works when translating from your default language to a secondary language, so I’m not sure this is something we would pursue. I will share it though.
I am having the same issue through out all sites when using WPML. When translating from french to english, often times the apostrophes in the french text will be interpreted as html and I cannot get rid of the tags. Also, some sentences get broken up and I cannot link them together. I’ve deactivated siteground plugins as requested, but that does not fix the issue.
Hi Ramy – Thank you for your comment. Could you please share a link to your support ticket so I can follow up on it?
We are new to WPML and thought it was pilot error that we were having problems. We were having issues translating English to Spanish where the translation didn’t actually translate, it would stay in English, but deduct credits. We were working on phrases at a time, so didn’t lose a ton. We were also getting errors, but I didn’t save them because we thought it was that we didn’t know how to use it. But yesterday, everything that wasn’t working began working, and we had been going about it correctly afterall.
Hi Winnie – Thanks for your comment. I’m glad to hear everything seems to be working again. If you have any problems, please open a support ticket so our support team can look into it further.
I am trying to: adding a glossary term from Arabic to English in the Automatic translation
Hi there – Thank you for your comment and for sharing your support ticket. I will share this with our development team.
Hi Allison,
We’ve had several issues with WPML but the main one remains that the YOAST translations don’t stay updated. This is a Woocommerce website mainly. Whenever we go back to edit any product page the YOAST translation has reverted back to another recent YOAST translation and not the one originally submitted.
Thank you,
Jerome @ Wilde Ones
Hi Jerome – Do you have a support ticket I can look into?
No, I haven’t started a support ticket on this issue yet. Shall I? It seems to be affecting older YOAST translations after a while as I usually only spot it after a while.
Hi Jerome – If something isn’t working correctly on our site, our support team is happy to help troubleshoot. If it’s a problem with WPML, they can also escalate it to the correct development team. You can start a chat or open a ticket here: https://wpml.org/forums/forum/english-support/
When a page with an iframe is translated with ATE, this iframe is sometimes seen and sometimes not seen in the translated page. We were analyzing this topic thoroughly in the link I send you.
iframes sometimes stay in the translation and sometimes they don’t.
In those cases I have had to replace the iframe with an image with the screenshot of the content of said iframe. Logically in that case I have to manually update this content.
Thank you for the comment and the link to your ticket!
1) I would like to be able to save my progress as I translate. It seems like it’s “all or nothing”. If the option exists, I did not find it. I have huge pages so it is sometimes impossible to do it all at once.
2) I would like to know how the syncing progress works. It seems like ATE tries to remember where we left. Sometimes, it’s not all sentences that are available for translation. I have to go back to the default language, add a space (or comma or period) somewhere to be able to allow ATE to discover the new translations.
3) Sometimes, I click on edit translations and I have missing translations that were already translated and that already are on the site. If I’m not careful, I will retranslate something that was already translated. Worst, if I used the “automatic translations” but edited a character or two, I won’t notice the difference. Therefore, “completing what is missing” results on losing the small edits.
4) I often get the endless spinning translation refresh icon next to a post and it simply does not stop.
5) To me, my website is the truth. So if a translation is on the site, I don’t want you to use your “memory” in ATE where you bring back another version of a translation. When I click on “edit translations”, it should always send what is translated on my website. I have trust issues with whatever is displayed in ATE. Therefore, I use too much time re-validating what was already validated because I never know if I will get translations from your cache system.
6) Can I flush all “jobs” you have in ATE. That way, I’m sure I will get the latest translations?
7) In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had a lot of error 500 when being sent to ATE. I have to hit the “back” button. Then, the icon is now “translation in progress”. I click on it and it “works”. Well… I often get an outdated result from your cache… so it’s frustrating.
8) I have a page that is linked to the wrong job. So when I “edit translations” for the home page, I’m sent to ATE for another page (ex: contact us).
9) Say I have 1000 translations in ATE for a page. Progress show 99%. It can take 2-3 minutes to find that “one sentence” that is not translated properly. I’d like to have the possibility to see only what needs to be translated or saved. Scrolling up and down to find that one missing sentence is painful.
I hope this helped.
Hi Maxime – Thanks for your detailed comment. I’ll do my best to address all your points:
1. There is a “Save Draft” button next to the green “Save and Continue” when you’re entering translations.
2. Do you mean that ATE isn’t loading all of the default language sentences for you to add translations?
3. If you make changes to a sentence (even some small changes), then ATE will not be able to apply translations saved in the translation memory. You can read about how translation memory works here. If you mean you haven’t changed anything in the default language sentences, but the translations disappear in ATE, that sounds like something worth investigating. I would recommend opening a support ticket about this.
4. I’ll notify our developers about this issue. The next time it happens, please open a support ticket so we can look into it.
5. ATE doesn’t apply translations from a cache – if you’re always translating using ATE, it will apply the latest translations. Are you adding translations using a different method (such as manual translation or the Classic Translation Editor)? If so, those changes aren’t saved in the translation memory because they aren’t done using ATE. Please see our translation memory FAQs.
6. You can cancel translation jobs by going to WPML → Translation Management and clicking the Jobs tab.
7. I’ll mention this to our developers. If you have a ticket link I can share with them, as well, that would be helpful.
8. Please try making a change to the default language and try opening it in ATE again.
9. Thanks for mentioning this. I’ll include this with my feedback for the developers.
First, thank you for the fast answer.
Here are more details:
2) It depends! Sometimes, I have to retranslate what was already translated as it’s missing. Other times, it’s showing an old version of a translation… as if you were keeping multiple versions of what I have saved and where giving me the wrong one. Hope it’s clear!
3) It looks like a bug then. Unfortunately, as a developer, I did not notice a pattern so it explains why I did not open a support ticket. I was unsure if I made a mistake or if it’s a bug. That being said, now, it happened so many times that I doubt I did that many mistakes!!
6) The icon is not always active. When it is available, it seems like it often does nothing. I might not understand what “canceling a job” really does. Can you elaborate? When I get to 100%, shouldn’t the job simply be removed?
8) I tried. I’m a developer so I try many alternative before calling it “a bug”!! It always brought me to the same wrong translations.
Thank you!
5) I’m using ATE. I created a page in the default language, translated it. It worked. Now, I edited the default language so I must update the translations. Clicking on “edit translations” does not always show the new strings I’ve added/edited in the default language.
Hi Maxime – Canceling a job clears an in progress job from the translations queue so no one can take and translate it anymore. I am reviewing the rest of your comments with our support and development teams. Thank you again for your detailed comment!
Please, make it possible to delete the translation option from the translator dashboard, either by the translator or the admin. Once I send the translation to the translator, it will never leave their dashboard, even if they resign it.
Also, the basket is no longer working. Once I select the translations and sent to be translated, it goes directly to the translator instead of going to the basket first.
Hi Geraldo – You can delete translation jobs by going to WPML → Translation Management and clicking the Jobs tab. Click the X icon to cancel any job that hasn’t been completed yet. Regarding the Translation Basket, if there is only one translator that meets the necessary language pairs, the translation job will automatically be assigned to them.
In the advanced translation editor, my Advanced Custom Fields are repeated two, sometimes three times, it looks very messy and confusing for our clients. I reached out to WPML support and was told that this is an issue with ACF. It would be great if you could work together to find out how this can be resolved.
Great to see that you’re continuing to improve WPML!
Hi Michael – Can you provide a link to your support ticket? I can mention this to our compatibility team.
Hi Allison
This was the thread I opened, my conversation with Norman is under the “private message” tab – https://wpml.org/forums/topic/wpml-chat-support-ticket-by-michaelt-92-1652194470/
And this is the link that the support agent sent me to:
https://wpml.org/forums/topic/acf-duplicating-fields-in-advanced-editor/
Thank you so much!
Hello I’m having an issue with the reply mail to clients after they paid in the appropriate language for example when they’re on the site in the French language when checking out playing after the confirmation email that is still for the appointment is not translate it to the French language
Hi Deborah – You should be able to translate these emails using String Translation. If you would like a supporter to look into it with you, you can start a chat with one here: https://wpml.org/forums/forum/english-support/
Hi,
WPML is not translating ACF custom fields… I have installed all necessary add-once but it seems translation fields are blank… do I need to do something extra?
Hi Rafal – When translating ACF fields, you first have to set the translation preferences. Please check out our documentation about translating ACF fields with WPML and see if that helps. Otherwise, our supporters can help look into it with you!
Hello Rafal,
ACF works with WPML but indeed it’s not easy to figure out the correct setup on yourown especialy if you use diffrent kinds of fields and your are doing it for the first time. We are currenlty working to improve here (both the documentation, we might have some vidoes etc). Please open a ticket on our support forum and one of our supporters will check your site to see what causes issues in your specific case.
Hi there, when I translate content with YOAST seo plugin, I find that the %title% tag doesn’t display correctly, and instead will come out like this “| text” when it should come out like this “text1 | text”
The text1 part is the page title, so at the start of the line I just get the title.
I also get a lot of stability issues when you have 1000+ pages.
Hi Mike – Did you try following our documentation about translating page SEO attributes? If it still doesn’t work for you, please let our support team know and add a link to your support ticket here so I can follow up!
Hi Mike – Just wanted to follow up here. We were able to reproduce the issue and we’ll work on a fix, though I can’t guarantee a timeline. Thank you for bringing it to our attention!
It would be nice to have internal links translated automatically.
Going through all internal links across translated pages in order to modify them is really time consuming, and as a result it discourages from undertaking new translations.
Hello – Have you tried going to WPML → Settings, scrolling to “Translate Link Targets” and clicking “Scan and adjust links”? If that doesn’t work, please check with our support team and share the link to the ticket here.
Hi, currently all Gutenberg strings get stored in string translations, and it is not possible to clean those out by domain as it is the case with other string domains. If we are not using the advanced translation editor, we do not want the strings cluttering up string translations and the database. A feature request has been submitted for this.
Thank you for your comment, Ben. I will share this with our development team.
Yes, please do something about this. +999
Hi Kristian & Ben – I just confirmed that our WPML team has this on their radar. I can’t guarantee any timelines, but there is a ticket to address it.
A big disadvantage of the editor is that changes made directly on the individual page are not synchronized with the translation. If later changes are made in the editor, the changes made directly in the page are overwritten.
Another disadvantage of the Advanced Editor is that it is no longer possible to access the HTML code directly.
Hi Fabienne – Yes, that’s correct, what you describe is how WPML’s translation memory works by design. Please see our Translation Memory FAQ. You can apply HTML using the HTML marker feature in the Advanced Translation Editor: https://wpml.org/documentation/translating-your-contents/advanced-translation-editor/#html-markers
Hello, I am using WPML with Tutor LMS Pro, and the pages within my theme dashboard are not being translated to the other languages of the page (Spanish and Polish), instead, 404 pages were created.
The only thing translated in the dashboard (user section) is the page of my profile and the dashboard page itself.
Thank you and kind regards,
Joaquin
Hi Joaquin – Tutor LMS Pro is only compatible when you translate it manually (it is not compatible with the Advanced Translation Editor). Please check out Tutor LMS’s documentation about how to translate with WPML here: https://docs.themeum.com/tutor-lms/addons/wpml/
Hello Allison,
Thank you for your prompt reply.
But the documentation was only for Courses, lessons, quizzes, and assignments.
And I was referring to the user section. Once you logged in you have your account, profile, etc… these are pages that are not overwritten with the original, there are just 404 pages. Will I be able to translate it with WPML?
Thank you!
BR,
Joaquin
Hi Joaquin – I’m afraid I’m not very familiar with this plugin, but our support team can help look into this with you: https://wpml.org/forums/forum/english-support/
Hi Joaquin – Just to follow up here, our compatibility teach reached out to Tutor LMS. They said they just released the Tutor LMS 2.0.7 and that full compatibility with WPML is expected to be released in the next update (2.0.8).
Hi,
1) The addition in the glossary (general) is not very UX friendly. After adding the main language term, you must then go to the last page to add a translation then it returns to page 1 and you have to go back to the last page to add the translation of the second language (etc) -> it’s really annoying when you have a big glossary
2) When adding an entry in the glossary from the ATE, it should also be possible to add the translation for the other languages
3) The possibility of adding additional blocks on the translated articles (WP editor) or exclude added blocks and that it does not overwrite them when reopening the ATE to translate the new entries
For us, these 3 features would make our life easier!
Thanks,
Hello – Thank you for your comments! I will share these with our UX designers.
I had immense problems with my Flothemes website although they explicit recommend using WPML for multilingual sites. With the phenomenal help of your support team it turned I could not use the advance translation at all. The manual process, however, is quite failure-prone in order to ensure that all parts were included. Galleries with photos were vanishing altogether when duplicating the page for the second language. So up to now I don’t have correctly translated ALT text for my images which as a photography business is an important downside harming my SEO.
Hi Chris – Thanks for your comment. We have not been able to confirm compatibility with Flothemes. If you have been in contact with them, please encourage the authors to join our Go Global program so we can assist them with compatibility.
My issues we regarding my other site, which is a close duplicate of this site – https://stopmalaria.it – which does still have WPML.
Upon updating WPML on my other site (https://sostegnoadistanza.eu), it simply deleted the plugin. I’ve never seen that before. All my translation work was gone, and since this action was a sign of a major bug, I didn’t risk reinstalling it and used another translator plugin.
I use the Salient theme which uses the WP Bakery builder, and WPML also caused the theme’s front end editor to not work. Overall it caused issues on my site. I’m afraid to update the Stop site’s WPML plugin now because I don’t want all my work to disappear.
Hi Deanna – Updating WPML should not delete it from your site. Also, deleting the WPML plugin does not cause you to lose your translations, as the translations are stored in your site’s database. Our support team can help investigate this with you: https://wpml.org/forums/forum/english-support/
One issue I am having every single time: When I open ATE from WordPress (click on the edit button), I get a blank page, then I have to refresh the page to get the ATE editor. This is pretty inconvenient.
Another thing that would be great is if ATE could automatically translate the links to point to the translated content. Every time I edit a translation in ATE, I need to go back to settings and translate all link targets, which is highly inconvenient.
Hi Baptiste – When you see the blank screen, do you notice ?ateJobCreationError=102 in the URL? If so, it’s one of the scenarios described above that we are working on. If you don’t see that in the URL, could you please open a support ticket and share the link here so we can look into it further?
Thank you for your feature request as well. I’ll share it with our development team.
Hi Allison,
No, there are no errors in the URL (the latest URL was https://e.ate.wpml.org/dashboard?id=35678304&language=en). I just tried, and I had to refresh the page three times to get something. And before you ask, I have tried waiting, but even after an hour, the page is still blank.
I won’t open a support ticket, it takes way too much time to deal with your support, and every time I have to create a staging site and gives you tons of access.
Hi Baptiste – Though it’s a bit more involved, a supporter would be able to investigate the problem and escalate it properly to be fixed. In the meantime, you can check these four things which might solve the issue before you need to contact a supporter: https://wpml.org/faq/checklist-before-opening-a-ticket-in-wpml-support/
Hi,
our 2 biggest issues:
A. we used the automatic translation and let a translation service check and correct this automatic translation. We imported their texts with XLIFF files.
The imported texts didn’t appear in the advanced editor and we had to change to the classic editor. it’s wasn’t any longer possible to use the automatic translation, which is a big issue for us. We don’t want to reach out to a translation service for every small text change. We hope it will be improved a next update. If we had known that before working with WPML, we would have chosen another plugin or worked in a different way.
This is the (german) support ticket to this topic:
https://wpml.org/de/forums/topic/automatische-uebersetzung-nach-xliff-import/
B. After changing the site URL (using plugin better search replace), most image URLs couldn’t be automatically changed. There wasn’t any site action notice and I have to change hundreds of media links manually. Support can’t help either.
This is the (german) support ticket to this topic:
https://wpml.org/de/forums/topic/alle-alle-links-zu-bildern-in-allen-sprachen-muessen-manuell-angepasst-werden/
I hope you can improve some of that.
We were very disappointed with all the workflow issues we had with your plugin.
Nathalie
Thank you for the detailed comments and the links to your tickets, Karl! I will follow up with our developers about these issues.
I have really a lot of issues with the WPML since I’m developing a 39-language site. However, the really great issue for me right now is described here: https://wpml.org/forums/topic/the-ate-adds-a-space-before-every-segment-inside-a-paragraph-in-chinese/. I’d like to give you just an example to show how big it is for me: I have just realised that I spent for nothing a lot of time changing manually date formats for different countries (I have around two hunded dates in tables on some pages), i.e. 01.01.2022 for by base language were changed to 01/01/2022 for English, French and 7 more, 1. 1. 2022 for five Balkan languages, 01-01-2022 for Dutch, 2022-01-01 for Lithuanian and Chinese, 2022. 01. 01. for Hungarian. All these changes are lost. Because after any (unrelated) change of an original page I lose all manually added translations if that page is a grandchild (or deeaper) one. Just for information, when a date is the only content of a segment to be translated, it may be translated only ‘manually’, via the search box. However, such kind of manual translations of grandchild (an so on) pages made in the ATE does not survive any change of an original page. Manually translated URLs in Unicode with language-specific hashtags (the WPML doesn’t convert them automatically) are to be lost on grandchild pages as well.
Best,
Hi Oleg – Thank you for the detailed comment and for the ticket links! You shouldn’t have to do any manual translations to change the date format – you can use String Translation instead: https://wpml.org/documentation/getting-started-guide/translating-your-sites-date-format-using-wpml/
I was not talking about dated of page publication or smth like that. I was talking about dates in texts on pages, more spesifically, in tables in my case. The ATE doesn’t understand that there are dates. It sees only numbers (with dots, dashes, slashes). Since there are only numbers in a segment, the ATE doesn’t register such segments for translation. I may translate them only manually, via the search box. I tried to put my dates inside date-tag, but the ATE still sees them as numbers only(( Anyway, URLs with hashes – are another problem (as weel as absolutely any manually added translation).
Thank you for the clarification, Oleg. I will share this with our developers.
Sorry, the link should be another one: https://wpml.org/forums/topic/html-attributes-translations-overwritten-in-ate-after-any-original-post-update/
I am using version 4.5.5 when I try to update to the newer version it say:
“Update failed: undefined”
So I am stuck there
Hi there – Please open a ticket for our support team to look into this for you: https://wpml.org/forums/forum/english-support/
Hi,
I faced some problems in the Advanced translator editor, when I send languages to be translated in bulk, sometimes it’s sent twice! and I end up with huge number of jobs.
Hello – If you haven’t already, please open a support ticket about this and share the link here. This is definitely something I would like to follow up on.
It should be great, if you can choose a different language as the source of the strings.
Example:
German is the main language and EN a translation.
When translating to FR or ES, I would love to choose EN and not the main language German.
It’s easier for translators to work with.
Hi Gökhan – Is this what you mean? https://wpml.org/documentation/getting-started-guide/string-translation/how-to-change-the-source-language-of-strings/
No actually I mean the Advanced Translation Manager. I would like to change the origninal language on the left side.
I understand now, thank you for clarifying Gökhan. WPML only works when translating from your default language to a secondary language, so I’m not sure this is something we would pursue. I will share it though.
I am having the same issue through out all sites when using WPML. When translating from french to english, often times the apostrophes in the french text will be interpreted as html and I cannot get rid of the tags. Also, some sentences get broken up and I cannot link them together. I’ve deactivated siteground plugins as requested, but that does not fix the issue.
Hi Ramy – Thank you for your comment. Could you please share a link to your support ticket so I can follow up on it?
We are new to WPML and thought it was pilot error that we were having problems. We were having issues translating English to Spanish where the translation didn’t actually translate, it would stay in English, but deduct credits. We were working on phrases at a time, so didn’t lose a ton. We were also getting errors, but I didn’t save them because we thought it was that we didn’t know how to use it. But yesterday, everything that wasn’t working began working, and we had been going about it correctly afterall.
Hi Winnie – Thanks for your comment. I’m glad to hear everything seems to be working again. If you have any problems, please open a support ticket so our support team can look into it further.
I am trying to: adding a glossary term from Arabic to English in the Automatic translation
I expected to see: English translation
Instead, I got: original Arabic term
https://wpml.org/forums/topic/glossary-term-from-arabic-to-english/#post-11713537
Hi there – Thank you for your comment and for sharing your support ticket. I will share this with our development team.
Hi Allison,
We’ve had several issues with WPML but the main one remains that the YOAST translations don’t stay updated. This is a Woocommerce website mainly. Whenever we go back to edit any product page the YOAST translation has reverted back to another recent YOAST translation and not the one originally submitted.
Thank you,
Jerome @ Wilde Ones
Hi Jerome – Do you have a support ticket I can look into?
No, I haven’t started a support ticket on this issue yet. Shall I? It seems to be affecting older YOAST translations after a while as I usually only spot it after a while.
Hi Jerome – If something isn’t working correctly on our site, our support team is happy to help troubleshoot. If it’s a problem with WPML, they can also escalate it to the correct development team. You can start a chat or open a ticket here: https://wpml.org/forums/forum/english-support/
When a page with an iframe is translated with ATE, this iframe is sometimes seen and sometimes not seen in the translated page. We were analyzing this topic thoroughly in the link I send you.
iframes sometimes stay in the translation and sometimes they don’t.
In those cases I have had to replace the iframe with an image with the screenshot of the content of said iframe. Logically in that case I have to manually update this content.
Thank you.
Link to support ticket:
https://wpml.org/forums/topic/string-translation-with-iframes/
Thank you for the comment and the link to your ticket!
1) I would like to be able to save my progress as I translate. It seems like it’s “all or nothing”. If the option exists, I did not find it. I have huge pages so it is sometimes impossible to do it all at once.
2) I would like to know how the syncing progress works. It seems like ATE tries to remember where we left. Sometimes, it’s not all sentences that are available for translation. I have to go back to the default language, add a space (or comma or period) somewhere to be able to allow ATE to discover the new translations.
3) Sometimes, I click on edit translations and I have missing translations that were already translated and that already are on the site. If I’m not careful, I will retranslate something that was already translated. Worst, if I used the “automatic translations” but edited a character or two, I won’t notice the difference. Therefore, “completing what is missing” results on losing the small edits.
4) I often get the endless spinning translation refresh icon next to a post and it simply does not stop.
5) To me, my website is the truth. So if a translation is on the site, I don’t want you to use your “memory” in ATE where you bring back another version of a translation. When I click on “edit translations”, it should always send what is translated on my website. I have trust issues with whatever is displayed in ATE. Therefore, I use too much time re-validating what was already validated because I never know if I will get translations from your cache system.
6) Can I flush all “jobs” you have in ATE. That way, I’m sure I will get the latest translations?
7) In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had a lot of error 500 when being sent to ATE. I have to hit the “back” button. Then, the icon is now “translation in progress”. I click on it and it “works”. Well… I often get an outdated result from your cache… so it’s frustrating.
8) I have a page that is linked to the wrong job. So when I “edit translations” for the home page, I’m sent to ATE for another page (ex: contact us).
9) Say I have 1000 translations in ATE for a page. Progress show 99%. It can take 2-3 minutes to find that “one sentence” that is not translated properly. I’d like to have the possibility to see only what needs to be translated or saved. Scrolling up and down to find that one missing sentence is painful.
I hope this helped.
Hi Maxime – Thanks for your detailed comment. I’ll do my best to address all your points:
1. There is a “Save Draft” button next to the green “Save and Continue” when you’re entering translations.
2. Do you mean that ATE isn’t loading all of the default language sentences for you to add translations?
3. If you make changes to a sentence (even some small changes), then ATE will not be able to apply translations saved in the translation memory. You can read about how translation memory works here. If you mean you haven’t changed anything in the default language sentences, but the translations disappear in ATE, that sounds like something worth investigating. I would recommend opening a support ticket about this.
4. I’ll notify our developers about this issue. The next time it happens, please open a support ticket so we can look into it.
5. ATE doesn’t apply translations from a cache – if you’re always translating using ATE, it will apply the latest translations. Are you adding translations using a different method (such as manual translation or the Classic Translation Editor)? If so, those changes aren’t saved in the translation memory because they aren’t done using ATE. Please see our translation memory FAQs.
6. You can cancel translation jobs by going to WPML → Translation Management and clicking the Jobs tab.
7. I’ll mention this to our developers. If you have a ticket link I can share with them, as well, that would be helpful.
8. Please try making a change to the default language and try opening it in ATE again.
9. Thanks for mentioning this. I’ll include this with my feedback for the developers.
First, thank you for the fast answer.
Here are more details:
2) It depends! Sometimes, I have to retranslate what was already translated as it’s missing. Other times, it’s showing an old version of a translation… as if you were keeping multiple versions of what I have saved and where giving me the wrong one. Hope it’s clear!
3) It looks like a bug then. Unfortunately, as a developer, I did not notice a pattern so it explains why I did not open a support ticket. I was unsure if I made a mistake or if it’s a bug. That being said, now, it happened so many times that I doubt I did that many mistakes!!
6) The icon is not always active. When it is available, it seems like it often does nothing. I might not understand what “canceling a job” really does. Can you elaborate? When I get to 100%, shouldn’t the job simply be removed?
8) I tried. I’m a developer so I try many alternative before calling it “a bug”!! It always brought me to the same wrong translations.
Thank you!
5) I’m using ATE. I created a page in the default language, translated it. It worked. Now, I edited the default language so I must update the translations. Clicking on “edit translations” does not always show the new strings I’ve added/edited in the default language.
Hi Maxime – Canceling a job clears an in progress job from the translations queue so no one can take and translate it anymore. I am reviewing the rest of your comments with our support and development teams. Thank you again for your detailed comment!
Please, make it possible to delete the translation option from the translator dashboard, either by the translator or the admin. Once I send the translation to the translator, it will never leave their dashboard, even if they resign it.
Also, the basket is no longer working. Once I select the translations and sent to be translated, it goes directly to the translator instead of going to the basket first.
Hi Geraldo – You can delete translation jobs by going to WPML → Translation Management and clicking the Jobs tab. Click the X icon to cancel any job that hasn’t been completed yet. Regarding the Translation Basket, if there is only one translator that meets the necessary language pairs, the translation job will automatically be assigned to them.