We’re excited to introduce “Translate Everything” – a top-requested feature that takes automatic translation to the next level. Translate Everything makes translating your content faster, easier, and cheaper than ever before, and makes keeping translations up to date a total breeze.
Since publishing this post, we released WPML 4.5.1 and 4.5.2. These include bug fixes and minor improvements, especially for Multilingual Blog license users. Be sure to update to the latest version for the best experience with WPML.
After nearly a year of development and months of testing, we’re excited to release WPML 4.5! This is WPML’s biggest release ever, and it comes jam-packed with loads of new features. Here are some of the highlights:
Translate Everything Automatically & Review Before Publishing
WPML 4.5 expands the automatic translation feature, allowing you to translate all your posts, pages, custom post types, products, taxonomy, custom fields, and more, simply by enabling the new Translate Everything mode.
See how it works in this short video:
Translate Everything mode immediately translates your content in the background as you publish it or edit existing content. This saves you tons of time and money, and ensures your site’s translations always stay up to date.
Translate all your content automatically as you create or edit it
You can also hold your translations for review before or after publishing and check how each translation looks on the front-end of your site.
Reviewing translations on your site’s front-end before publishing
Hire External Translation Reviewers
What if you don’t speak the language you’re translating your site into? No problem! Also new to WPML is the Translation Reviewer Directory. This helps you find qualified external reviewers with WPML experience that speak your site’s languages. These reviewers will double-check that everything sounds natural and correct. Plus, since the reviewers aren’t translating your content from scratch, their rates are reasonable enough to fit any budget.
New Payment Options for Automatic Translation
Automatic translation remains the most affordable and quickest way to translate your site, and now you have two payment options for your added convenience.
Pay As You Go
You can still sign up for an automatic translation account and pay for the number of credits you actually use each month, just as before. If you don’t use automatic translation, you don’t have to pay anything. Plus, you get 2,000 credits each month just for having an automatic translation account.
Clients who purchase a new Multilingual CMS or Agency account starting from September 29th a package of automatic translation credits included for free with their purchase.
More Site Keys
Don’t worry about “wasting” your site keys on development sites. All WPML accounts (both new clients and existing clients) get extra site keys specifically for development sites.
Account type
# of production keys
# of development keys
Blog
1
3
CMS
3
9
Agency
Unlimited
Unlimited
Fewer Plugins to Manage
The Translation Management add-on is now included in WPML’s core plugin for Multilingual CMS and Agency accounts. This means one less plugin to install and keep up to date while maintaining all the same functionality you had before.
The Translation Management tabs are also more intuitive to make navigating the WPML plugin easier.
Don’t use Translation Management? No worries. WPML only loads the code that handles the features you use, so it won’t slow your site. For example, if you don’t use a translation service or automatic translation, it won’t load the code that handles translation services or automatic translation.
New Setup Wizard
We’ve completely revamped the WPML setup wizard so that making your site multilingual is straightforward and simple. Plus, now that the Translation Management add-on is part of the WPML core plugin, all the setup is part of one streamlined process.
Choosing Your Site’s Languages
Choosing How to Translate
If you create a custom or country-specific language, you can now map it to a pre-configured language as you create it in the setup wizard or in WPML → Languages. This allows you to use automatic translation and spell check with your custom languages. Now, you only need to make minor edits instead of translating from scratch.
Bug Fixes, Compatibility Updates, and More
For a full list of everything included in this release, check out the changelog.
We’re Already Running WPML 4.5 on a Production Site
Our site Adelance has been using WPML 4.5 for the last two months. This allowed us to “field test” the WPML 4.5 features and work out any issues before releasing it to clients. It also gave us first-hand experience as our own client, and we’re confident and excited about the results.
Translating and reviewing this site takes about 10% of the time it previously took us to translate ourselves from scratch. The results in both Spanish and Hebrew are at least as good as before. Automatic translation really excels with straightforward texts written in conversational language.
Plus, it keeps our translation costs much lower than before. This means we can translate the entire site without worrying about breaking the budget.
How to Install WPML 4.5
As with other major releases, we are deploying WPML 4.5 gradually. You will see the update on your site as it becomes available.
To skip the queue and get this update right away go to Plugins → Add New, click the Commercial tab, and then use the Check for updates button.
Checking for the WPML 4.5 update
Of course, you can also download WPML 4.5 manually by going to your WPML account’s Downloads page.
Give WPML 4.5 a Try and Let Us Know How We Did
Now, we’d like to hear from you!
What kind of site do you have, and how do you think WPML 4.5 will help you?
Before trying WPML 4.5, do you feel like you know what to expect and what the new features are?
After trying WPML 4.5, what do you like most and least about release?
Are there any issues this release doesn’t address that you’d like us to prioritize next? Please include links to relevant support tickets.
We rely on your feedback to help shape our releases, so please be sure to share your feedback in the comments below!
100 Responses to “WPML 4.5 – Translate All of Your Site’s Content Automatically”
I updated and get the message for the plugin ‘translation management’ to delete it. Is this save to do right away? I really like the options you added now 🙂
Hi Jacqueline – Yes, you can delete it. The Translation Management functionality is now included in the main WPML core plugin. Glad you’re enjoying WPML 4.5 so far!!
Perfect, it was just hours and asked about more easy translation to my website, WPML solve it. 👌
Great – let us know how it works for you.
It will continue to work with DeepL among the automatic translators.
Hi Carli – WPML continues to work with Google Translate, Microsoft Azure, and DeepL.
Hi,
I tried 4.5, and I deeply hate it. I did not use translate management before, I deactivated it, and used classic translator instead.
Can I use the classic translator only? It seems to me like I can’t. So please advise is it possible to use the classic translator only.
Thank you,
I guess this comes as a mild remedy for what was done because that means that I’ll have to do a set-up again and again for each page/post I plan to translate manually with the classic editor, and that is NOT what I wanted when I chose WPML.
I am seriously reconsidering the use of WPML. The remaining time left under this year’s subscription will serve me well to plan the migration because I don’t want to use the plugin which causes so much complication on what was once a simple workflow. I am sorry to say that, but that’s how things work now.
So, basically, as far as I am concerned, you’ve got time until April, when my subscription is to be renewed, to make things easier for me. Or not. .
Iva
Hi Iva – Just to clarify, do you manually translate all your pages (create a new page and add all the translations from scratch using the WordPress editor), or do you add translations using WPML’s Classic Translation Editor (click the plus icon, open the page in the Classic Translation Editor, and add your translations)? If it’s the latter, you only need to choose the Classic Translation Editor in WPML → Settings, and your pages should always open in the Classic Translation Editor to add your translations.
If you manually translate your pages, would you mind sharing why so we can better understand your use case? Do your translated pages have different designs than your default language pages? Do you use plugins that require manual translation? Do you prefer it over the other options (if so, what is it you prefer about it)?
Thank you again for taking the time to share your feedback!
Yes, I often have different designs for each language and I use classic tramslator (I click on plus to add the translation).
However, I backuped my WordPress base, used Polylang migration plugin, migrated the translations in literally 5 seconds, added the language switcher in my menues, installed free sting translation plugin for Polylang, translated few stings that needed to be translated again and – good to go!
Expense? 1 hour, money: 0.
Plus, it came to me as a surprise that the free string translation plugin for Polylang offers the removal of unused strings (from deleted plugins) this clearing the base from the trash, and WPML is not (or maybe is, but you did not bother to make this function visible).
Oh, and…overall, my site is a bit faster, too! Not much and it’s not a big deal since I’m in very green PSI territory on my mobile to, but still..
Basically, I’m on Polylang now (testing and deciding) and my WPML subscription is on the ice.
What is not there to understand better? If you actually wanted to understand better your end users, you would have offered email 1to1 support, NOT FORUM, to your paying customers. All other plugin offer that, for their paying clients, because that’s the message you actually want to understand.
I don’t get you people… Seems like you do everything to make it more difficult, and play hide and seek with your tutorial robots wrote them, and no personal treatment.
Oh, well…
I got excited about the prepaid credit packages as I have been asking all along about credits that don’t expire. My excitement was gone as soon as I saw that a prepaid packed is over 5 times the price of the pay as you go credits. I can understand that it’s more expensive since it means you won’t earn on expired credits. But +5 times higher? 🤯😥
Hi John-Pierre – Thanks for your comment, and I understand your concern. We did a deep dive into the data to come up with numbers to ensure we wouldn’t lose money on these prepaid packages, but it’s important to get feedback like yours. I’ll relay your concerns.
I agree with John-Pierre. We add content in batches, without a fixed frequency. We may not add anything new for months so credits that do not expire would be ideal, if priced ok.
Thanks for your consideration.
Thanks for your feedback, Arno. I’ll be sure to share this with the rest of the team. It’s worth mentioning that with an automatic translation account, you’re only charged for the credits you use. So for months that you don’t translate anything, you’re not charged anything.
The extreme scenario is this. When you use monthly credits and by the end of the month you have used 100.001 credits, then you fall in the 500.000 credits bucket and you pay $72. That’s $55 more then for 100.000 credits. That’s a waste because it expires right away.
The alternative here would be a package of 200.000 but that’s priced at $180. That’s 2.5 times more then for 500.000 monthly credits.
As said, I understand that packages are priced higher, but would expect it to be more in line with the monthly credit price for 5.000 or 15.000 credits. At the moment, the packages are not interesting enough. Not even in the above mentioned scenario.
Hi John-Pierre – Thanks for bringing this up. We’re actually in the process of reviewing our automatic translation account pricing to solve exactly the scenario you describe with the pricing tiers. Stay tuned…
Hello,
We’ve renewed our subscription just recently.
Do we have to pay anything extra to utilize “WPML 4.5” ?
Please advise. Thank you.
Best Regards and Blessings,
Dr. Augusto Agostini-Chapel, Chaplain
Christian Health University
Hi Augusto – You can translate your site yourself or add other users to your site to translate your content at no additional charge. If you use a professional translation service, their services are not included. If you want to translate your site automatically, the payment options are explained in this blog post or in this article about pricing for automatic translation.
HI there, I didnt see WPML in my plugin to request “update”. shall i need to do it manually?
deactivate, download and reinstall?
Hi Calvin – Please be sure your WPML plugin is registered. You will then see the button to Check for Updates.
Hello,
Hope you all doing well.
I am facing an issue with the latest 4.5 update. I did not see the update button; so I downloaded the update manually and installed it. However, my WordPress installation crashed. I had to manually disable all plugins from the database.
I deleted all WPML plugins, including dokan and woocommerce multi language plugins; and tried to install only the WPML 4.5 plugin with all other plugins deactivated, however, I still face the same issue.
If you have any suggestions, I would really appreciate it.
Hi Ivan – Are you referring to automatic translation credits? All existing clients (including Lifetime accounts) can get 2000 free credits each month by creating an automatic translation account.
It’s weird, I always get 0 credits, and I’m also a lifetime user
Hi Ben – It’s 2000 credits per automatic translation account. If you create a different automatic translation account for each site, you get 2000 credits for each site. However, you can also connect sites to use the same automatic translation account. In this case, you only get 2000 credits total per month, but your sites share a translation memory and glossary as well.
Hello, the new update sounds promising as we always translate our site into multiple languages. Will the program translate and go through all pages again after the update? We have links that have not been translated and where support has not yet been able to help.
Best wishes
Hello – Translate Everything will automatically translate any pages and posts that don’t already have existing translations. If you have pages and posts that were already translated using a different method, it won’t overwrite those translations.
Hi,
Does that update will translate my products automatically too, or is it only the pages?
Hi Stefan – Yes, Translate Everything works with Products too!
New unnecessary features for users with only sitepress plugin. How can we disable the new translation priority adds terms in all languages and just bloat db with lines which is not used.
How do we disable “translate this document”. All users don’t use WPML like translate document, we use it as just 2 different pages and connect them with hreflang as “this is our Canadian version or post A”. So all this features, which is starting to worry me that you will turn the core plugin into the translation management plugin. Please give us options to disable all such.
For all this updates when you force users into this flow when many want to stick to WP native structure we are looking more into migrating to alternative once there is no filters or settings to disable such. Now there is new buttons everywhere new features many with me do not want or need. But no option to disable just let our db grow with new things and the new terms which is added as translation terms for translation priority please allow us to delete all this.
Hi John – I’m not sure what you’re asking. As stated in the announcement, WPML only loads the code that handles the features you use, so it won’t slow your site. For example, if you don’t use a translation service or automatic translation, it won’t load the code that handles translation services or automatic translation. There’s nothing to disable.
You do not have to translate your entire site automatically with Translate Everything. It’s simply an option you can choose during the setup wizard or in WPML → Settings.
It adds a lot of new settings it looks like you merged translation management plugin and the core wpml plugin?
How do I know it is not used and loaded? To clean settings and UI I would prefer to be able to disable functions.
How can I keep using old WPML. This is more and more making me want to move to alternatives just the big migration headache that is stopping me right now. It’s really only focusing on blog segment to translate sites not using it as a technical platform to connect pages. I understand you want to cover both but at least use as you did before separate the plugins. Why not include all SEO and other glue plugins into core otherwise? Because people are not using all of it. Pretty sure SEO glue plugin is more relevant to include than others. But still keep them separated.
I will evaluate and consider refund of the recent renewal. It’s sad WPML is locking in to features and adding a different flow I liked WPML back in the day except the performance issues. Today it’s more of an blog translation plugin.
My last question is please allow us to disable things and keep translation management and core plugin separated.
Can I also as how I can have following disabled by default. As this is some new in 4.5. I just want to use standard page to page connection nothing with a translation document and editor.
Translate this Document
Use WPML’s Translation Editor
Hi John – Thank you for your feedback about not wanting Translation Management in the core plugin. It’s not currently possible to disable features in the UI, but it’s worth reiterating that WPML only loads the code for the features you use. You can continue using the same workflow as before – we didn’t remove any existing translation workflows, we just added a new one to make it easier for clients to build multilingual sites. You can continue to access older versions of our plugins in the changelog, however we always recommend keeping your plugins up to date.
Question about using an external reviewer. I noticed that they set a price per word. But how do they (and I) know how many words they need to review or have reviewed? Thanks.
Hi again 🙂 Translation Managers and site owners can see the word count in Translation Management. Currently there isn’t a way for reviewers to see the word count, but we have opened a feature request for it thanks to your feedback!
Ok, thanks for (both) your replies!
Hey there!
Is it possible to enable the 1.000.000 limit without first having to pay USD 72 for 500.000? I need 1 million credits this month but paying USD 72 + USD 117 seems too high.
Thank you
Hi Tim,
I replied through our Facebook page 🙂
Hi Tim – You must enable and pay for the 500,000-credit limit first in order to unlock the 1 million-credit limit. Read more about how to enable a higher credit limit.
The update completly broke my site and need to downgrade version.
It broke menus, page links, footer, etc. Using Divi theme and wp last version.
When I downgrade version all runs well again.
Thank you for your feedback. If you haven’t done so already, please report this to our support team, as updating WPML shouldn’t break your site. They can help you look into it further, and it helps track the issue.
Hi Allison,
How I can Automatically Translate a specific page in steps?
After activating the credits.
B.Rgds
Hi! If you want to automatically translate only specific pages, you have to select the Translate Some mode. You can select it either during the WPML setup wizard, or on the WPML → Settings page. Then, simply go to WPML → Translation Management, select the post(s) or page(s) you want to translate, select into which languages, and click the Translate selected content button. That’s it, WPML will then automatically translate your content.
WPML is a disaster… It’s slow, horribly designed and provides one of the worst user experiences I’ve come across in modern time.
It’s poorly integrated with WordPress and makes working with translation a true pain. It has also broken our site several times during development due to how poorly it’s been thought out.
The translation tool is a complete mess too. Bad UI, and features are lackluster. Merging content to make it easier to translate isn’t saved between edits, so every time we change the color of a button or change the radius of an image we have to redo translations for 20-30% of the content.
We’re throwing WPML out and moving to Weglot. WPML is not usable in production.
Hi Fredrik – I’m sorry to hear about your experience with WPML. Can I ask which other plugins you use on your site and how you translate your site (automatic translation, professional translation service, translating yourself, etc.)? Any details or links to support tickets would be tremendously helpful in looking into this and making improvements.
It’s a 3 page landing site with 4 blog posts we tried it on and it was basically a Divi theme and very barebones setup. We haven’t raised any tickets, we translate ourselves and don’t use any automatic translations or professional service.
My suggestion for improvement would be to rework the entire solution from the ground up with a focus on usability and a proper flow for working with translating content. The whole need for duplicating content make everything cluttered and doesn’t actually provide any benefits. It just makes maintenance much more tiresome to work with and very prone to errors.
Menus are a complete mess, settings are unclear and updating WPML is a chore… I could go on and on about things that are wrong with this. I only wish I’d never spent the money in the first place :/
Hi Fredrik – Thanks for the extra information. Our support team will be in touch with you via email so we can understand and hopefully make some improvements 🙂
How are in 4.5 the Comments solved – is there now a solution? I use the motopress hotel-review-plugin and till now (previeous version) reviews are only visible on the source language-layer of the comment. do you have now in v4.5 a solution/feature to translate comments into other languages too?
Hi Jochen – WPML is fully compatible with the MotoPress Hotel Booking plugin, but I don’t see the Reviews add-on listed in our compatibility directory. I am double-checking with our compatibility team.
Our compatibility team has confirmed that we have not worked with the author on the Reviews add-on specifically, but it should work given that we have no recent issues reported. If you have any issues with it, please let us know, and we can work with MotoPress on fixing them.
i think the question is if/how WPML 4.5 handles “comments” in general. because the hotel-review-plugin extends the comments-structure of WP.
Hi Jochen – WPML does not support translating comments except when it comes to WooCommerce reviews.
What kind of site do you have, and how has WPML 4.5 helped you?
I have an internet store selling products to cars,
Before trying WPML 4.5, did you feel like you knew what to expect and what the new features are?
No
After trying WPML 4.5, what do you like most and least about this release?
I have not tried it yet.
Are there any issues this release doesn’t address that you’d like us to prioritize next? Please include links to relevant support tickets.
I get a warning on WP which I am not sure what to do. That’s the main reason why I have not installed it yet. Here is the warning:
WooCommerce Multilingual detected an active cache plugin on your site.
Caching may cause currency display issues for your customers if you are using the multi-currency feature.
To avoid this, set your cache plugin to not cache pages for visitors that have a cookie set in their browser.
Hi Thor – The warning has to do with WooCommerce Multilingual, not WPML. If you use a caching plugin, we recommend excluding any pages that use multi-currency from your cache to ensure your clients see prices in the correct currency. When you try WPML 4.5, please let us know what you think!
Heya Allison,
we are running several WPML Plugins and have WordPress 5.8.1 installed. The update page says that compatibility is unknown. I’d love to update, but don’t want to risk anything and will wait for an official report on compatibility with 5.8.1.
Cheers
Hi Guido – WPML 4.5 is compatible with WordPress 5.8.1.
It worked quite well with our site, the only problem I had was that after creating the account, somehow all pages of the site were immediately translated, meaning about 60.000 credits were charged without giving me a chance to confirm the process.
There is a missing step that tells me “with current settings, X pages will be translated using Azure / Linguee and this will lead to X credits. Confirm / review settings / cancel.
This is especially important since the cheapest service (Azure, I believe) was selected by default, giving me no chance to switch to Linguee before all translations were done. I checked the translations and the quality is so far inferior to Linguee that I had to re-do about 40% of the translated texts manually (copy pasting paragraphs into and from linguee’s website). Basically I wasted half of the credits on pages I did not want to translate, and on translations that i had to fully redo with an external service, manually.
Not only were many of the sentences built in an awkward manner (wrong in an embarrassing way, that it reminds me of the infamous instruction manuals auto-translated from chinese), but the chosen translations did often not fit the context of the surrounding text. Linguee gets this right effortlessly, and the higher cost is worth the saved time.
I’m glad you include linguee’s service, but I think you should really get the UI right, even more so when it leads to unexpected cost and/or incredibly low quality of translations that cannot be undone.
Thanks for your comment, Tim. This is really helpful feedback!
Hey there!
To be honest I tried but I couldn’t get it work… after I update to 4.5 every time I would click to translate a post or page, it would go to the Gutenberg editor, not to the Advanced Translation Editor. On the plugin translation I says the Advanced Translation Editor it’s now on the core WPML… so no success. Maybe you can explain me what im doing wrong?
Thanks
Hi Luis – You can activate the Advanced Translation Editor by going to WPML → Settings. If it’s enabled but it’s still opening in the Gutenberg editor, please let our support team know, and they can help investigate what’s going wrong.
I get the following errors after installing 4.5. All plugins are activated. There’s no way to updated the plugins, they state they are current. Something is not working well…
WPML-Update ist unvollständig
Bei Ihnen läuft das aktualisierte sitepress-multilingual-cms, aber die folgenden Komponenten sind nicht aktualisiert:
Ihre Seite wird in dieser Konfiguration nicht ordnungsgemäß funktionieren Bitte aktualisieren Sie alle Komponenten, die Sie verwenden. Für WPML-Komponenten können Sie Updates von Ihrem WPML.org-Account erhalten oder auomatisch aktualisieren, nachdem Sie Ihr WPML registriert haben.
WPML Forms: Please activate your WPML CMS, WPML String Translation and WPML Translation Management plugins.
Hi Michael – Is WPML registered on your site? You should be able to go to Plugins → Add New and click the Commercial tab. You may need to click Check for Updates to see the latest available version (here’s some documentation about it). If you’re still having trouble, please contact our support team, and they can help look into it further.
you want the future ? show every strings’ usage (where is it used, context is very important in translation).
WPML is registered yes. I have now reverted to the old version, then used the WPML interface to upgrade to 4.5 again, This seems to have solved the problem.
Great! Please be sure to let us know what you think.
Hi, michael how did you do that?
Allison: I tried what you suggested, but get the error PCLZIP_ERR_BAD_FORMAT (-10) : Invalid archive structure. Plz help!
Update: Looks like we had set the minimum RAM set to 40 MB and after changing it to 128 MB it worked.
Great! Glad you were able to update.
Hi guys, I didn’t use WPML for 3 years now. But exactly on the day 4.5 launched I got a new customer, should ‘refresh’ his site, that had not been updated since 2019, and translate to English and French. Seemed like ‘good luck’ for me, I took a look at WPML again, and I used the automatic translation (Translate Everything).
Conclusion: WPML UX is, well, still, and even more, confusing. It took me quite some time to understand what is going on, and much time to find, and find again, the settings I needed. The setup of an automatic translation account for more than one site alone was a nightmare, and yes, I read your documentation. So, I am pretty sure, my new customer will never be able to do anything without me..
I used DeepL for the translation, the results were good, according to my customer.
But: the agency that built the website made some technical nonsense, adding individual custom css code to every single page with WP Bakery Page Builder. This css code, and other WP Bakery Page settings, probably post meta, were not copied to the automatically generated translation pages. So the translated pages do have a good translation, but look terribly, and I have to work through every single translated page manually, adding the css codes and the page settings. Which is no fun. Why is this?
Those credit ranges: this was mentioned before, it’s a strange model. I am still testing and working out how to set up my workflow, having used almost 30000 credits up to now for nothing. So: 2000 free credits is nice, but I would need some kind of free ‘dummy translation’ to lorem ipsum to set up my workflow.
Thank you for your thoughtful and valuable comments, Helmut. I am already discussing your points with our team. It might be worth reaching out to our support team about the issue with the CSS and post meta not transferring to the translations.
I updated and get the message for the plugin ‘translation management’ to delete it. Is this save to do right away? I really like the options you added now 🙂
Hi Jacqueline – Yes, you can delete it. The Translation Management functionality is now included in the main WPML core plugin. Glad you’re enjoying WPML 4.5 so far!!
Perfect, it was just hours and asked about more easy translation to my website, WPML solve it. 👌
Great – let us know how it works for you.
It will continue to work with DeepL among the automatic translators.
Hi Carli – WPML continues to work with Google Translate, Microsoft Azure, and DeepL.
Hi,
I tried 4.5, and I deeply hate it. I did not use translate management before, I deactivated it, and used classic translator instead.
Can I use the classic translator only? It seems to me like I can’t. So please advise is it possible to use the classic translator only.
Thank you,
Iva
Hi Iva – You can still use the Classic Translation Editor. Here is more information about how to activate and use the Classic Translation Editor. You can also still translate your content manually.
Thank you, Alison,
I guess this comes as a mild remedy for what was done because that means that I’ll have to do a set-up again and again for each page/post I plan to translate manually with the classic editor, and that is NOT what I wanted when I chose WPML.
I am seriously reconsidering the use of WPML. The remaining time left under this year’s subscription will serve me well to plan the migration because I don’t want to use the plugin which causes so much complication on what was once a simple workflow. I am sorry to say that, but that’s how things work now.
So, basically, as far as I am concerned, you’ve got time until April, when my subscription is to be renewed, to make things easier for me. Or not. .
Iva
Hi Iva – Just to clarify, do you manually translate all your pages (create a new page and add all the translations from scratch using the WordPress editor), or do you add translations using WPML’s Classic Translation Editor (click the plus icon, open the page in the Classic Translation Editor, and add your translations)? If it’s the latter, you only need to choose the Classic Translation Editor in WPML → Settings, and your pages should always open in the Classic Translation Editor to add your translations.
If you manually translate your pages, would you mind sharing why so we can better understand your use case? Do your translated pages have different designs than your default language pages? Do you use plugins that require manual translation? Do you prefer it over the other options (if so, what is it you prefer about it)?
Thank you again for taking the time to share your feedback!
Yes, I often have different designs for each language and I use classic tramslator (I click on plus to add the translation).
However, I backuped my WordPress base, used Polylang migration plugin, migrated the translations in literally 5 seconds, added the language switcher in my menues, installed free sting translation plugin for Polylang, translated few stings that needed to be translated again and – good to go!
Expense? 1 hour, money: 0.
Plus, it came to me as a surprise that the free string translation plugin for Polylang offers the removal of unused strings (from deleted plugins) this clearing the base from the trash, and WPML is not (or maybe is, but you did not bother to make this function visible).
Oh, and…overall, my site is a bit faster, too! Not much and it’s not a big deal since I’m in very green PSI territory on my mobile to, but still..
Basically, I’m on Polylang now (testing and deciding) and my WPML subscription is on the ice.
What is not there to understand better? If you actually wanted to understand better your end users, you would have offered email 1to1 support, NOT FORUM, to your paying customers. All other plugin offer that, for their paying clients, because that’s the message you actually want to understand.
I don’t get you people… Seems like you do everything to make it more difficult, and play hide and seek with your tutorial robots wrote them, and no personal treatment.
Oh, well…
I got excited about the prepaid credit packages as I have been asking all along about credits that don’t expire. My excitement was gone as soon as I saw that a prepaid packed is over 5 times the price of the pay as you go credits. I can understand that it’s more expensive since it means you won’t earn on expired credits. But +5 times higher? 🤯😥
Hi John-Pierre – Thanks for your comment, and I understand your concern. We did a deep dive into the data to come up with numbers to ensure we wouldn’t lose money on these prepaid packages, but it’s important to get feedback like yours. I’ll relay your concerns.
I agree with John-Pierre. We add content in batches, without a fixed frequency. We may not add anything new for months so credits that do not expire would be ideal, if priced ok.
Thanks for your consideration.
Thanks for your feedback, Arno. I’ll be sure to share this with the rest of the team. It’s worth mentioning that with an automatic translation account, you’re only charged for the credits you use. So for months that you don’t translate anything, you’re not charged anything.
The extreme scenario is this. When you use monthly credits and by the end of the month you have used 100.001 credits, then you fall in the 500.000 credits bucket and you pay $72. That’s $55 more then for 100.000 credits. That’s a waste because it expires right away.
The alternative here would be a package of 200.000 but that’s priced at $180. That’s 2.5 times more then for 500.000 monthly credits.
As said, I understand that packages are priced higher, but would expect it to be more in line with the monthly credit price for 5.000 or 15.000 credits. At the moment, the packages are not interesting enough. Not even in the above mentioned scenario.
Hi John-Pierre – Thanks for bringing this up. We’re actually in the process of reviewing our automatic translation account pricing to solve exactly the scenario you describe with the pricing tiers. Stay tuned…
Hello,
We’ve renewed our subscription just recently.
Do we have to pay anything extra to utilize “WPML 4.5” ?
Please advise. Thank you.
Best Regards and Blessings,
Dr. Augusto Agostini-Chapel, Chaplain
Christian Health University
Hi Augusto – You can translate your site yourself or add other users to your site to translate your content at no additional charge. If you use a professional translation service, their services are not included. If you want to translate your site automatically, the payment options are explained in this blog post or in this article about pricing for automatic translation.
HI there, I didnt see WPML in my plugin to request “update”. shall i need to do it manually?
deactivate, download and reinstall?
Hi Calvin – Please be sure your WPML plugin is registered. You will then see the button to Check for Updates.
Hello,
Hope you all doing well.
I am facing an issue with the latest 4.5 update. I did not see the update button; so I downloaded the update manually and installed it. However, my WordPress installation crashed. I had to manually disable all plugins from the database.
I deleted all WPML plugins, including dokan and woocommerce multi language plugins; and tried to install only the WPML 4.5 plugin with all other plugins deactivated, however, I still face the same issue.
If you have any suggestions, I would really appreciate it.
Regards,
Hi Adeelah – I’m sorry to hear this. I would recommend contacting our support team who can assist with this. Please note it does not appear that Dokan is currently compatible with WPML. — Editing this comment to say that Dokan’s latest release should be compatible with WPML! We are working on updating our documentation, so stay tuned 🙂
Hi
What about lifetime members?
We get 0?
Hi Ivan – Are you referring to automatic translation credits? All existing clients (including Lifetime accounts) can get 2000 free credits each month by creating an automatic translation account.
It’s weird, I always get 0 credits, and I’m also a lifetime user
Hi Nestor – Please create an automatic translation account. The first 2000 credits you use each month are free of charge.
Hi,
Is that 2000 credits per site or for all sites?
Hi Ben – It’s 2000 credits per automatic translation account. If you create a different automatic translation account for each site, you get 2000 credits for each site. However, you can also connect sites to use the same automatic translation account. In this case, you only get 2000 credits total per month, but your sites share a translation memory and glossary as well.
Hello, the new update sounds promising as we always translate our site into multiple languages. Will the program translate and go through all pages again after the update? We have links that have not been translated and where support has not yet been able to help.
Best wishes
Hello – Translate Everything will automatically translate any pages and posts that don’t already have existing translations. If you have pages and posts that were already translated using a different method, it won’t overwrite those translations.
Hi,
Does that update will translate my products automatically too, or is it only the pages?
Hi Stefan – Yes, Translate Everything works with Products too!
New unnecessary features for users with only sitepress plugin. How can we disable the new translation priority adds terms in all languages and just bloat db with lines which is not used.
How do we disable “translate this document”. All users don’t use WPML like translate document, we use it as just 2 different pages and connect them with hreflang as “this is our Canadian version or post A”. So all this features, which is starting to worry me that you will turn the core plugin into the translation management plugin. Please give us options to disable all such.
For all this updates when you force users into this flow when many want to stick to WP native structure we are looking more into migrating to alternative once there is no filters or settings to disable such. Now there is new buttons everywhere new features many with me do not want or need. But no option to disable just let our db grow with new things and the new terms which is added as translation terms for translation priority please allow us to delete all this.
Hi John – I’m not sure what you’re asking. As stated in the announcement, WPML only loads the code that handles the features you use, so it won’t slow your site. For example, if you don’t use a translation service or automatic translation, it won’t load the code that handles translation services or automatic translation. There’s nothing to disable.
You do not have to translate your entire site automatically with Translate Everything. It’s simply an option you can choose during the setup wizard or in WPML → Settings.
It adds a lot of new settings it looks like you merged translation management plugin and the core wpml plugin?
How do I know it is not used and loaded? To clean settings and UI I would prefer to be able to disable functions.
How can I keep using old WPML. This is more and more making me want to move to alternatives just the big migration headache that is stopping me right now. It’s really only focusing on blog segment to translate sites not using it as a technical platform to connect pages. I understand you want to cover both but at least use as you did before separate the plugins. Why not include all SEO and other glue plugins into core otherwise? Because people are not using all of it. Pretty sure SEO glue plugin is more relevant to include than others. But still keep them separated.
I will evaluate and consider refund of the recent renewal. It’s sad WPML is locking in to features and adding a different flow I liked WPML back in the day except the performance issues. Today it’s more of an blog translation plugin.
My last question is please allow us to disable things and keep translation management and core plugin separated.
Can I also as how I can have following disabled by default. As this is some new in 4.5. I just want to use standard page to page connection nothing with a translation document and editor.
Translate this Document
Use WPML’s Translation Editor
Hi John – Thank you for your feedback about not wanting Translation Management in the core plugin. It’s not currently possible to disable features in the UI, but it’s worth reiterating that WPML only loads the code for the features you use. You can continue using the same workflow as before – we didn’t remove any existing translation workflows, we just added a new one to make it easier for clients to build multilingual sites. You can continue to access older versions of our plugins in the changelog, however we always recommend keeping your plugins up to date.
Question about using an external reviewer. I noticed that they set a price per word. But how do they (and I) know how many words they need to review or have reviewed? Thanks.
Hi again 🙂 Translation Managers and site owners can see the word count in Translation Management. Currently there isn’t a way for reviewers to see the word count, but we have opened a feature request for it thanks to your feedback!
Ok, thanks for (both) your replies!
Hey there!
Is it possible to enable the 1.000.000 limit without first having to pay USD 72 for 500.000? I need 1 million credits this month but paying USD 72 + USD 117 seems too high.
Thank you
Hi Tim,
I replied through our Facebook page 🙂
Hi Tim – You must enable and pay for the 500,000-credit limit first in order to unlock the 1 million-credit limit. Read more about how to enable a higher credit limit.
The update completly broke my site and need to downgrade version.
It broke menus, page links, footer, etc. Using Divi theme and wp last version.
When I downgrade version all runs well again.
Thank you for your feedback. If you haven’t done so already, please report this to our support team, as updating WPML shouldn’t break your site. They can help you look into it further, and it helps track the issue.
Hi Allison,
How I can Automatically Translate a specific page in steps?
After activating the credits.
B.Rgds
Hi! If you want to automatically translate only specific pages, you have to select the Translate Some mode. You can select it either during the WPML setup wizard, or on the WPML → Settings page. Then, simply go to WPML → Translation Management, select the post(s) or page(s) you want to translate, select into which languages, and click the Translate selected content button. That’s it, WPML will then automatically translate your content.
All of this is described on our Getting Started Guide’s section about the Translate Some mode.
WPML is a disaster… It’s slow, horribly designed and provides one of the worst user experiences I’ve come across in modern time.
It’s poorly integrated with WordPress and makes working with translation a true pain. It has also broken our site several times during development due to how poorly it’s been thought out.
The translation tool is a complete mess too. Bad UI, and features are lackluster. Merging content to make it easier to translate isn’t saved between edits, so every time we change the color of a button or change the radius of an image we have to redo translations for 20-30% of the content.
We’re throwing WPML out and moving to Weglot. WPML is not usable in production.
Hi Fredrik – I’m sorry to hear about your experience with WPML. Can I ask which other plugins you use on your site and how you translate your site (automatic translation, professional translation service, translating yourself, etc.)? Any details or links to support tickets would be tremendously helpful in looking into this and making improvements.
It’s a 3 page landing site with 4 blog posts we tried it on and it was basically a Divi theme and very barebones setup. We haven’t raised any tickets, we translate ourselves and don’t use any automatic translations or professional service.
My suggestion for improvement would be to rework the entire solution from the ground up with a focus on usability and a proper flow for working with translating content. The whole need for duplicating content make everything cluttered and doesn’t actually provide any benefits. It just makes maintenance much more tiresome to work with and very prone to errors.
Menus are a complete mess, settings are unclear and updating WPML is a chore… I could go on and on about things that are wrong with this. I only wish I’d never spent the money in the first place :/
Hi Fredrik – Thanks for the extra information. Our support team will be in touch with you via email so we can understand and hopefully make some improvements 🙂
How are in 4.5 the Comments solved – is there now a solution? I use the motopress hotel-review-plugin and till now (previeous version) reviews are only visible on the source language-layer of the comment. do you have now in v4.5 a solution/feature to translate comments into other languages too?
Hi Jochen – WPML is fully compatible with the MotoPress Hotel Booking plugin, but I don’t see the Reviews add-on listed in our compatibility directory. I am double-checking with our compatibility team.
Our compatibility team has confirmed that we have not worked with the author on the Reviews add-on specifically, but it should work given that we have no recent issues reported. If you have any issues with it, please let us know, and we can work with MotoPress on fixing them.
i think the question is if/how WPML 4.5 handles “comments” in general. because the hotel-review-plugin extends the comments-structure of WP.
Hi Jochen – WPML does not support translating comments except when it comes to WooCommerce reviews.
What kind of site do you have, and how has WPML 4.5 helped you?
I have an internet store selling products to cars,
Before trying WPML 4.5, did you feel like you knew what to expect and what the new features are?
No
After trying WPML 4.5, what do you like most and least about this release?
I have not tried it yet.
Are there any issues this release doesn’t address that you’d like us to prioritize next? Please include links to relevant support tickets.
I get a warning on WP which I am not sure what to do. That’s the main reason why I have not installed it yet. Here is the warning:
WooCommerce Multilingual detected an active cache plugin on your site.
Caching may cause currency display issues for your customers if you are using the multi-currency feature.
To avoid this, set your cache plugin to not cache pages for visitors that have a cookie set in their browser.
Hi Thor – The warning has to do with WooCommerce Multilingual, not WPML. If you use a caching plugin, we recommend excluding any pages that use multi-currency from your cache to ensure your clients see prices in the correct currency. When you try WPML 4.5, please let us know what you think!
Heya Allison,
we are running several WPML Plugins and have WordPress 5.8.1 installed. The update page says that compatibility is unknown. I’d love to update, but don’t want to risk anything and will wait for an official report on compatibility with 5.8.1.
Cheers
Hi Guido – WPML 4.5 is compatible with WordPress 5.8.1.
It worked quite well with our site, the only problem I had was that after creating the account, somehow all pages of the site were immediately translated, meaning about 60.000 credits were charged without giving me a chance to confirm the process.
There is a missing step that tells me “with current settings, X pages will be translated using Azure / Linguee and this will lead to X credits. Confirm / review settings / cancel.
This is especially important since the cheapest service (Azure, I believe) was selected by default, giving me no chance to switch to Linguee before all translations were done. I checked the translations and the quality is so far inferior to Linguee that I had to re-do about 40% of the translated texts manually (copy pasting paragraphs into and from linguee’s website). Basically I wasted half of the credits on pages I did not want to translate, and on translations that i had to fully redo with an external service, manually.
Not only were many of the sentences built in an awkward manner (wrong in an embarrassing way, that it reminds me of the infamous instruction manuals auto-translated from chinese), but the chosen translations did often not fit the context of the surrounding text. Linguee gets this right effortlessly, and the higher cost is worth the saved time.
I’m glad you include linguee’s service, but I think you should really get the UI right, even more so when it leads to unexpected cost and/or incredibly low quality of translations that cannot be undone.
Thanks for your comment, Tim. This is really helpful feedback!
Hey there!
To be honest I tried but I couldn’t get it work… after I update to 4.5 every time I would click to translate a post or page, it would go to the Gutenberg editor, not to the Advanced Translation Editor. On the plugin translation I says the Advanced Translation Editor it’s now on the core WPML… so no success. Maybe you can explain me what im doing wrong?
Thanks
Hi Luis – You can activate the Advanced Translation Editor by going to WPML → Settings. If it’s enabled but it’s still opening in the Gutenberg editor, please let our support team know, and they can help investigate what’s going wrong.
I get the following errors after installing 4.5. All plugins are activated. There’s no way to updated the plugins, they state they are current. Something is not working well…
WPML-Update ist unvollständig
Bei Ihnen läuft das aktualisierte sitepress-multilingual-cms, aber die folgenden Komponenten sind nicht aktualisiert:
wpml-media-translation (erforderliche Version: 2.7.0)
wpml-string-translation (erforderliche Version: 3.2.0)
Ihre Seite wird in dieser Konfiguration nicht ordnungsgemäß funktionieren Bitte aktualisieren Sie alle Komponenten, die Sie verwenden. Für WPML-Komponenten können Sie Updates von Ihrem WPML.org-Account erhalten oder auomatisch aktualisieren, nachdem Sie Ihr WPML registriert haben.
WPML Forms: Please activate your WPML CMS, WPML String Translation and WPML Translation Management plugins.
Hi Michael – Is WPML registered on your site? You should be able to go to Plugins → Add New and click the Commercial tab. You may need to click Check for Updates to see the latest available version (here’s some documentation about it). If you’re still having trouble, please contact our support team, and they can help look into it further.
you want the future ? show every strings’ usage (where is it used, context is very important in translation).
Hi Ahmed – This feature already exists in String Translation 🙂 Read more about it here: https://wpml.org/documentation/getting-started-guide/string-translation/finding-strings-that-dont-appear-on-the-string-translation-page/#track-where-strings-appear-on-the-site
WPML is registered yes. I have now reverted to the old version, then used the WPML interface to upgrade to 4.5 again, This seems to have solved the problem.
Great! Please be sure to let us know what you think.
Hi, michael how did you do that?
Allison: I tried what you suggested, but get the error PCLZIP_ERR_BAD_FORMAT (-10) : Invalid archive structure. Plz help!
Update: Looks like we had set the minimum RAM set to 40 MB and after changing it to 128 MB it worked.
Great! Glad you were able to update.
Hi guys, I didn’t use WPML for 3 years now. But exactly on the day 4.5 launched I got a new customer, should ‘refresh’ his site, that had not been updated since 2019, and translate to English and French. Seemed like ‘good luck’ for me, I took a look at WPML again, and I used the automatic translation (Translate Everything).
Conclusion: WPML UX is, well, still, and even more, confusing. It took me quite some time to understand what is going on, and much time to find, and find again, the settings I needed. The setup of an automatic translation account for more than one site alone was a nightmare, and yes, I read your documentation. So, I am pretty sure, my new customer will never be able to do anything without me..
I used DeepL for the translation, the results were good, according to my customer.
But: the agency that built the website made some technical nonsense, adding individual custom css code to every single page with WP Bakery Page Builder. This css code, and other WP Bakery Page settings, probably post meta, were not copied to the automatically generated translation pages. So the translated pages do have a good translation, but look terribly, and I have to work through every single translated page manually, adding the css codes and the page settings. Which is no fun. Why is this?
Those credit ranges: this was mentioned before, it’s a strange model. I am still testing and working out how to set up my workflow, having used almost 30000 credits up to now for nothing. So: 2000 free credits is nice, but I would need some kind of free ‘dummy translation’ to lorem ipsum to set up my workflow.
Thank you for your thoughtful and valuable comments, Helmut. I am already discussing your points with our team. It might be worth reaching out to our support team about the issue with the CSS and post meta not transferring to the translations.