WPML 5.0: One Admin, Background Translation, and Pay Only for New Content

We just released WPML 5.0. It gives you one place to run everything, translates your whole site while you do other things, and with PTC it bills each page once, so your later edits are free.

Three things matter most in this release:

• A much simpler admin. One WPML menu and one Settings page with a search box. No more hunting for the page that holds a setting.
• A streamlined way to translate a whole site. Turn on Translate Everything Automatically, see what it will cost before you confirm, and let it run in the background.
• Pay only for new content. With PTC, our own AI translation engine, a page is billed once per language. Edits inside a page you already paid for are free.

Every WPML add-on ships a 5.0 release alongside the core plugin. The full list, with a link to each version page, is at the end of this post.

Tired of hunting through WPML menus? Now there is one

In WPML 4, settings and tools were spread across many admin pages. In WPML 5.0 there is one WPML menu: Translations, Settings, Support and Activate & Update. When you set up automatic translation, AI Translation Billing joins them.

All settings now live on one Settings page. A search box at the top jumps to the section that holds the setting you are looking for. String Translation and Media Translation are tabs under Translations. Sticky Links, CMS Navigation and Export and Import sit together in an Add-ons group.

Your bookmarks and the links in our documentation keep working. They redirect to the new places.

Need Spanish for Spain and Spanish for Mexico? Languages are now language and country pairs

Many sites serve regions, not only languages. Until now, a regional variant meant a custom language and a mapping step before automatic translation would work. In WPML 5.0 every language is a language and country pair. Add Spanish (Mexico) next to Spanish and both are ready for automatic translation right away. Where the engine has no regional variant, WPML translates as the base language.

Custom languages, your own SVG flags and the language labels are all edited in one place. When you add a language that shares a name with one already active, WPML adds the country to the new name, so your switcher shows Spanish and Spanish (Mexico). A custom language that cannot be translated automatically is labelled "Manual translation only".

Existing sites are updated on their own. Your languages, URLs and settings carry over.

No more keeping a browser tab open: translation runs in the background

Translate Everything Automatically used to need an open WPML page to keep sending and receiving translations. In WPML 5.0 it runs in the background. Publish or edit content, close the tab, and the translations arrive on their own. This needs a site the translation service can reach from the internet. On a private or password-protected site, WPML tells you to keep the page open, as before.

Content written in any of your languages is translated into all the others, not only content in the default language. You can set a cut-off date per post type, so older content stays untranslated, and change it later without turning Translate Everything Automatically off.

Before you turn it on, the setup wizard and the Translation Dashboard show what will be translated per content type, the word count and the total cost. You can turn it on from the Translation Dashboard without sending a test translation first. Adding a language later picks up the background translation for that language. Making a post type translatable opens the cost table first, so you choose what to include before anything is translated.

Pay for new content, not for every edit

With Translate Everything Automatically on PTC, each page translated after you turn it on is billed once per language. Later edits to that page are free, until the page grows past what you already paid for. Content that was translated before you switched to PTC counts as done and is not billed again.

Translation credits are now called words across WPML, and WPML shows the words it will charge before it sends anything. Rates are on the automatic translation pricing page.

Categories and tags stuck in one language? Taxonomies now translate like posts

Categories, tags and custom taxonomy terms had their own translation screen, away from everything else. In WPML 5.0 the Translation Dashboard has a Taxonomies section. Send terms for translation the way you send posts, and translate the taxonomy labels alongside the terms.

Under Translate Everything Automatically, new and edited terms are queued on their own and re-translated when they change. Term descriptions and the SEO fields from Yoast SEO and Rank Math go into the same translation jobs. The dashboard also flags categories and tags that changed after they were translated, alongside posts.

Also in WPML 5.0

• PTC is the recommended translation engine. DeepL, Google and Microsoft remain available and are labelled "Legacy". Switching to PTC is one dialog in the Translation Dashboard.
• After switching to PTC, new translations are published without review by default. With a legacy engine they wait for your review, as before.
• The new Improve Translations tab, under Translations, learns from the edits you keep making and applies the fixes you accept to future translations. It shows a badge when new suggestions are waiting. Available with PTC.
• Translators can open any translation in a language pair assigned to them, without being assigned the job first.
• WPML 5.0 is tested on PHP 8.5, including its bundled libraries.
• String Translation 5.0 has a faster Strings screen and translation queue, taxonomy slug translation that takes effect on the front end, and consistent behaviour on sites whose default language is a regional English variant.
• Media Translation 5.0 has faster media screens, a status filter that filters, and notifications again when a translation job is completed.
• CMS Navigation 5.0 and Sticky Links 5.0 fix caching, rendering and saving issues.
• WPML Multilingual & Multicurrency for WooCommerce 5.6 makes multicurrency checkout and payments more reliable, keeps product data in sync across translations, and works fully with the new WPML navigation and settings.
• Advanced Custom Fields Multilingual 5.0 makes field-group translation setup clearer and keeps repeater and flexible content rows in sync in translations.
• WPML SEO, Gravity Forms Multilingual, Ninja Forms Multilingual, WPForms Multilingual, WPML Multilingual for CF7, WPML Multilingual for BuddyPress and BuddyBoss, WPML GraphQL, WP All Import Multilingual, WPML Export and Import, MailChimp for WordPress Multilingual and the OTGS Installer are updated for 5.0, each with its own fixes.
• Every plugin in this release includes security hardening, including one issue reported by Wordfence, whose collaboration we are grateful for.

Full details for every plugin

Core components:

• WPML Multilingual CMS 5.0.0
• WPML String Translation 5.0.0
• WPML Media Translation 5.0.0
• WPML CMS Navigation 5.0.0
• WPML Sticky Links 5.0.0
• OTGS Installer 5.0.0

Add-ons:

• WPML Multilingual & Multicurrency for WooCommerce 5.6.0
• Advanced Custom Fields Multilingual 5.0.0
• WPML SEO 5.0.0
• Gravity Forms Multilingual 5.0.0
• Ninja Forms Multilingual 5.0.0
• WPForms Multilingual 5.0.0
• WPML Multilingual for CF7 5.0.0
• WPML Multilingual for BuddyPress and BuddyBoss 5.0.0
• WPML GraphQL 5.0.0
• WP All Import Multilingual 5.0.0
• WPML Export and Import 5.0.0
• MailChimp for WordPress Multilingual 5.0.0

How to update your site

1. Back up your site first.
2. Go to Dashboard → Updates, or to WPML → Activate & Update, and update all your WPML plugins together. The Installer lists them for you.
3. The update reaches your WordPress admin within 24 hours of the release. To get it right away, open Plugins → Add New → Commercial and check for updates.

Your languages, URLs and settings carry over on their own. If something is not right after the update, you can return to WPML 4.9.6 from the same screen. WPML 4.9.6 added rollback support for exactly this.