We’re ready with a new beta release, with a highly requested feature – to allow displaying untranslated content in different languages.
Remember how you’d like your blog posts to appear in different languages (but without accidentally switching language) and how you wished you didn’t have to duplicate stuff when translation is not needed?
WPML 2.4.2 does all this, and more!
We talked about it a couple of months ago and now it’s ready for your testing pleasure. It’s very difficult to display content in a different language. This causes a host of issues, especially with keeping navigation in the right language.
Instead, we’ve added a new content duplication mechanism. This will allow you to create the same content for different languages, without sweating over it. Just choose what to duplicate and WPML keeps all translations in-sync with the original.
This means that you can blog, setup products and create your portfolio in just one language and have it displayed in all language.
The new content duplication logic is part of the Translation Management module, so it’s only available if you’re using the Multilingual CMS package.
Duplicating Content from the Editor
When you edit any content (post, page or custom types), you’ll see this new set of check-boxes in the Translate yourself section. Choose the languages you want to duplicate to and click on the Duplicate button at the bottom.
WPML creates the same content in the languages you’ve selected. Whenever you edit the original, duplicates will update as well.
If you later decide to translate these duplicates yourself, click on the pencil icon to edit them. There, WPML shows you that they are duplicates. Click on the button to translate them individually and start editing.
Batch-Duplicating Using the Translation Dashboard
When you want to duplicate a large amount of content, all at once, use WPML’s Translation Dashboard.
Choose the content to duplicate. Next to each language, there’s a new option to duplicate. Click on Send content and you’re done.
It doesn’t matter if you’re selecting content from the Translation Dashboard or from edit pages. You can later edit that content and make it independent or turn existing translations (which are actual duplicate content) into duplicates.
WPML Tells Google Where the Original Is
In case you don’t know it, WordPress has a way of telling search engines where content originates from. The rel=“canonical“ tag indicates the original URL of every piece of content. This way, if it appears in several URLs, search engines know where to list it on.
Since now, WPML knows that duplicate content is indeed duplicate, it communicates this information. The rel=“canonical“ tag will point to the URL of the default language.
This way, Google doesn’t mistake you for trying to SPAM it and always knows where the original content is.
Download and Test
As always, you can get Beta versions from your WPML account.
Login to your account, click on Downloads and scroll all the way down.
We’re looking for feedback about this new workflow. If you’re running a site that needs extensive content duplication, we suggest that you take this new feature for a test run and let us know how it’s working for you.
Update: Since this post, WPML includes a fully featured content duplication module, which makes it possible to show untranslated content.