WPML allows you to remove a language you are not using. If you are not planning on activating it again, you can delete that language’s translations from your site’s database. Additionally, you can manually remove any leftover translation files for that language.
If you want to remove both the languages you are not using and everything related to WPML from your site, see the page about deleting WPML data and doing a WPML reset.
To remove a secondary language and the existing translations for that language from your site, follow these steps:
- Go to WPML → Languages. In the Sites Languages section, Remove the secondary language(s) of your choice.
- A table with the deactivated languages appears. Click on the delete icon to remove all the content you have translated into your secondary language from the database.
Please note that this option is available in versions WPML 4.5.9 and above.
Deleting the MO and PO Files for the Removed Language
If you continue to see your theme and plugins downloading language files in the removed language, you can delete all of the MO and PO files for that language:
- Access your website using an FTP Tool such as FileZilla.
- Go to your site’s ../wp-content/languages/plugins/ folder.
- Delete the MO and PO files ending with the language code of the language you want to delete. For example, if you removed the Spanish language (ES) with the Spanish locale (es), the language files would end with -es_ES.mo and -es_ES.po.
- To delete theme translations, open the themes folder in ../wp-content/languages/ and follow the instructions from the previous step.