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Updated
August 18, 2023

WooCommerce Multilingual allows you to display product content in the default language when viewing the page in other languages. If a translation exists WooCommerce Multilingual displays it, otherwise, it displays product contents from the default language.

If your WooCommerce store features a large number of products and multiple languages, it might not be practical for you to translate them all. This is why WooCommerce Multilingual offers the option for untranslated product content to appear in any target language. Other site content, such as the header, menu, and footer still appear in the selected target language.

Displaying an untranslated product in a secondary language

What about SEO?

Choosing to display product content in the default language doesn’t have negative SEO implications for your site.

WPML tells Google what the default product and category is, so Google can ignore all these duplicates. If you then actually translate a product or a category, Google will then see it as new content and not a duplicate.

Displaying Content in the Default Language for Products

Please keep in mind that this translation option does not create products in the second language. Instead, it displays the default language content which cannot be associated with translated taxonomies. For an in-depth overview of this translation option, please see the page about displaying untranslated content in secondary languages.

For this feature to work correctly, make sure you have the option to Automatically Adjust IDs turned on.

If you are installing WooCommerce Multilingual on a new site, the setup wizard lets you decide to display products that are not translated in the default language.

Selecting the option in the WooCommerce Multilingual setup wizard

If you want to activate this translation mode for an existing site, go to the WPML → Settings page. Here, scroll down to the Post Types Translation section and select the Translatable – use translation if available or fallback to default language option for Products.

Manually setting to display products as translated

As you can see from the image above, you can also customize the products slug in other languages, if needed.

Displaying Product Categories, Tags and Attributes in the Default Language

Besides products themselves, you can also display untranslated product categories, tags, and attributes. To do this, go to the WPML → Settings page. Here, scroll down to the Taxonomies Translation section and select the Translatable – use translation if available or fallback to default language option.

If there is a lock icon next to any of the taxonomies you want to modify, simply click on the lock icon to enable the translation option for that taxonomy.

Setting product categories, tags and attributes to be displayed as translated