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Translating Custom Fields

Dario
Updated
February 12, 2025

Learn how to translate custom fields in WordPress into more languages with WPML. Translate manually by yourself, or with automatic translation.

Custom fields let you add extra data like text, images, or selections to your posts, pages, and custom post types. This lets you manage and organize your content more effectively.

For example, a real estate website might use a custom post type called Properties, which has custom fields like Price, Property Type, and Number of Rooms. When you fill out these fields for each property, you offer valuable information to the readers.

An example of a custom post type with various custom fields assigned to it on the site’s backend

With WPML, you can translate custom fields to make all this additional information available in many languages.

A Default Language Page with Custom Fields

A Translated Page with Custom Fields

Getting started is easy. Just install and activate the WPML Multilingual CMS plugin on your site and follow three simple steps.

1. Identify the Source of Your Custom Fields

The custom fields on your WordPress website might come from:

  • Your theme
  • A dedicated plugin, such as Advanced Custom Fields (ACF)
  • Custom code you’ve added to your site

WPML works with all major WordPress custom field plugins. It also supports translating custom fields added via code, as long as you set their translation options correctly. 

Your translation approach depends on where these custom fields come from. For example, if you’re using ACF, you can translate all your fields using the Advanced Custom Fields Multilingual (ACFML) add-on plugin.

For custom fields created in all other ways, you need to tell WPML how it should translate each one.

2. Decide How to Translate Custom Fields

To tell WPML how to translate your custom fields, go to WPML → Settings and scroll down to Custom Fields Translation. You’ll see four translation options to choose from for each custom field:

Translate
  • Makes your custom field values available for translation.
  • Ideal for text fields.
Copy
  • Copies the field value across all languages, keeping it the same everywhere.
  • Ideal for custom fields like numbers or images that stay the same in every language.
Copy once
  • Copies the value from the default language only one time, which allows you to create different field values per language.
Don’t translate
  • The default option for custom fields that you haven’t chosen how to translate yet. 
  • You can select Don’t translate for fields you want WPML to overlook. If you want a field to have the same value across languages, switch it to the Copy option.

Once you select a translation preference for each custom field, don’t forget to Save.

Selecting the translation preferences for custom fields on the WPML Settings page

3. Translate Pages with Custom Fields

To translate pages with custom fields:   

  1. Go to WPML → Translation Management.
  2. Select the page or post containing your custom fields.
Selecting post with custom fields to translate
Selecting post with custom fields to translate
  1. Choose a translation method and translate.

If you’re translating by yourself, go to WPML → Translations and click the Translate button. This opens the Advanced Translation Editor, where you can translate all your content, including custom fields.

Translating custom fields in the Advanced Translation Editor
Translating custom fields in the Advanced Translation Editor

Go Multilingual with WPML

WPML does more than translate custom fields. It’s your comprehensive solution for translating every website aspect, from pages and posts to forms and WooCommerce products.

See our pricing page to learn more about WPML.