Elementor - "<" or ">" Stripped Out or Using Unexpected HTML Markers

Overview of the issue

When translating pages created with Elementor using WPML’s Advanced Translation Editor (ATE), characters like < (less than) or > (greater than) are stripped out or incorrectly interpreted as HTML tags.

Workaround

Please, make sure of having a full site backup of your site before proceeding.

• Open …/wp-content/plugins/sitepress-multilingual-cms/classes/xliff/class-wpml-tm-xliff-writer.php file.
• Look for line 407.
• Replace:

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  private function remove_line_breaks_inside_tags( $string ) {     return preg_replace_callback( '/(<[^>]*>)/m', array( $this, 'remove_line_breaks_inside_tag_callback' ), $string ); }   /**  * @param array $matches  *  * @return string  */ private function remove_line_breaks_inside_tag_callback( array $matches ) {     $tag_string = preg_replace( '/([\nr\t ]+)/', ' ', $matches[0] );     $tag_string = preg_replace( '/(<[\s]+)/', '<', $tag_string );     return preg_replace( '/([\s]+>)/', '>', $tag_string ); }

• With:

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  private function remove_line_breaks_inside_tags( $string ) {     // Match only valid HTML tags (opening, closing, or self-closing)     return preg_replace_callback( '/(<\/?[a-zA-Z][^<>]*>)/m', array( $this, 'remove_line_breaks_inside_tag_callback' ), $string ); }   /**  * @param array $matches  *  * @return string  */ private function remove_line_breaks_inside_tag_callback( array $matches ) {     // Remove unnecessary spaces and line breaks inside valid HTML tags     $tag_string = preg_replace( '/([\nr\t ]+)/', ' ', $matches[0] );     $tag_string = preg_replace( '/(<[\s]+)/', '<', $tag_string );     return preg_replace( '/([\s]+>)/', '>', $tag_string ); }