Background of the issue:
I am trying to use the automatic translation feature of WPML to translate German sentences into English. I encountered an issue with the translation of headlines. The specific example is the German headline 'Unsere Lösungen für Ihren individuellen Bedarf' which should be translated to 'Our solutions for your individual needs'. The issue can be seen on this page: hidden link
Symptoms:
The automatic translation feature of WPML is incorrectly capitalizing every word in English translations of German headlines. For example, 'Our solutions for your individual needs' is translated as 'Our Solutions for Your Individual Needs'.
Questions:
Why is WPML capitalizing every word in the English translation of German headlines?
How can I correct the capitalization issue in WPML translations?
Hello,
My name is Carlos, and I will continue working on this ticket
I have been able to reproduce a similar issue in a sandbox site with a fresh new WordPress + WPML installation, so I have escalated this ticket to our 2nd tier of support for further testing.
I will get back to you as soon as I get an answer from my colleagues.
Thank you very much for your patience and understanding!
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )Italian (Italiano )
Timezone: Europe/Madrid (GMT+02:00)
Hi there!
This is Paola and I will continue with the ticket as Carlos is on holidays.
Our developers have confirmed that what you’re seeing is expected behavior.
When the German headline does not include any punctuation, the translation engine interprets it as a title, and therefore applies title case capitalization in English (e.g. “Our Solutions for Your Individual Needs”).
When you add punctuation such as a period (.) at the end of the headline, the engine recognizes it as a sentence, and applies sentence case instead (e.g. “Our solutions for your individual needs”).
This is a general behavior across many AI translation engines, which rely on punctuation to infer context — whether a phrase is a title, a sentence, or a label.
Ok, so this means, there will be no other option for me, to manually add dots - what I do not want due to design choices or I have to manually adjust ALL headlines on the webpage?
Wouldn't it be a nice feaure to let me as a user choose - do i want The Caplital Letters Head or do I want normal, correct sentences?
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )Italian (Italiano )
Timezone: Europe/Madrid (GMT+02:00)
I’ve checked this with our developers, and it’s actually the expected behavior.
So the translation engine isn’t misbehaving — it’s just following that convention now.
If you prefer your headings in sentence case, you can still adjust them manually in the translation editor. That way, you’ll have full control over the capitalization style. There is no other solution.
