TablePress – Tables Can’t Be Translated

Overview of the Issue

If you create a table with the TablePress plugin, you cannot translate it with WPML. WPML does not show the cells of the table as separate texts in the translation editor.

Workaround

There are three ways to show a TablePress table in more than one language. Choose one of them.

Option 1: One Table per Language (Recommended)

1. Go to TablePress → All Tables.
2. Hover over the original table and click Copy.

   

3. Edit the copy and translate its cells in TablePress.
4. Add the copy to the translated page. Use the TablePress table block or the shortcode of the copy.

Option 2: Row Filtering (TablePress Premium)

Option 3: Translate the Table with WPML (Advanced)

Limitations: TablePress saves all the cells of a table as one block of code. WPML sends this block to the translation editor as one field.

• You cannot translate the cells in the Advanced Translation Editor.
• In the Classic Translation Editor, you can only edit the cells as raw code, for example [["Tour","Days","Price"],["Coastal Loop","2","240 EUR"]]. Translate only the words inside the quotes. Keep every bracket, quote and comma. One mistake breaks the table.

1. Go to WPML → Settings → Translation Editor. Under Classic Translation Editor, click Choose.
2. Go to WPML → Settings → Post Types Translation. Set TablePress Tables to Translatable – only show translated items and click Save.

   

3. Go to WPML → Settings → Custom Fields Translation. Click Show system fields. Set these fields to Copy and click Save:
   • _tablepress_table_options
   • _tablepress_table_visibility

   

4. Go to WPML → Translations, in the Dashboard tab. In the TablePress Tables section, select the table. Click Translate your content, choose Translate myself and click Translate content.

   

5. Go to the Translation Tasks tab and click Translate on the row of the table.
6. In the Body field, click the Code tab. Translate the cells there, as described above. Do not use the Visual tab. Select Translation is complete for each field and click Save & Close.

   

7. Get the ID of the translated table:
   1. In the Translation Tasks tab, find the row of the table. If the row is not there, the job is assigned to another translator. Take the job first.
   2. Click View.

      

   3. The browser opens an address like example.com/fr/?post_type=tablepress_table&p=8. The number after p= is the ID of the translated table. The page shows “Page not found”. This is normal, because TablePress tables are not public pages.
8. Go to the Strings tab. In the Utilities section, under Not seeing strings that you are looking for?, click Admin Texts Translation.

   

9. Search for tablepress_tables. Select the result and click Add to String Translation.

   

10. Go back to the Strings tab. In the domain dropdown, select admin_texts_tablepress_tables and click Filter.
11. Find the ID of the original table. The string contains pairs like "table_post":{"1":5}. The first number is the table ID that TablePress → All Tables shows. The second number is the ID of the original table.
12. Click the pencil icon to translate the string. Copy the original into the translation. Then replace the ID of the original table (5 in this example) with the ID of the translated table (8 in this example). Press Enter to save.

    

13. Translate the page that shows the table as usual. The table block or shortcode keeps the same table ID. On the translated page, it now shows the translated table.

All known issues