Translating Post Categories, Tags, and Custom Taxonomies

Tomer Helzer

Updated

April 17, 2025

Learn how to translate WordPress categories, tags, product categories, and custom taxonomies into more languages with WPML.

Getting Started

To translate taxonomies, install and activate the following plugins: 

• WPML
• WPML String Translation
• WooCommerce Multilingual (if you’re translating product categories)

Translate Taxonomies with WPML

To translate any taxonomy with WPML, simply send your content for translation via WPML → Translation Management. WPML will translate your taxonomies along with the rest of your content.

If your taxonomies aren’t translating, make sure they’re set to Translatable:

1. Go to WPML → Settings and scroll down to Taxonomies Translation.
2. Find your taxonomy and make sure it’s set to Translatable – only show translated items.

Translate Taxonomy Base Slugs

Taxonomy base slugs are the part of a URL that comes before individual taxonomy terms. For example, in a travel blog with Destinations as the taxonomy base slug and Spain as a taxonomy term, a URL would look like this:

To translate taxonomy base slugs with WPML: 

1. Go to WPML → Settings and scroll down to the Taxonomies Translation section.
2. Set your custom taxonomy to one of the two Translate options and Save.
3. Click on the Set different slugs in different languages for {Taxonomy Name} option that appears and fill out the translated slugs for each language.

Update Taxonomy Translations

To update taxonomy translations: 

1. Go to WPML → Taxonomy Translation.
2. Select the taxonomy you want to update and make your changes.

If you want to update taxonomy translations automatically:

1. Go to WPML → Settings and scroll down to Translated documents options.
2. Uncheck Don’t show translated taxonomies in Translation Editor.
3. Finally, send a page or post which has the taxonomy you want to update for translation. WPML will automatically update the taxonomy translation along with the rest of your content.

Sync Taxonomy Structure Across Languages

If you change your site’s taxonomy structure in the default language, you need to sync this change across your languages.

To sync your taxonomy structure across languages: 

1. Go to WPML → Taxonomy Translation.
2. Select the taxonomy you want to sync and switch to the Hierarchy Synchronization tab. Click Update Taxonomy Hierarchy to sync.