I am having all kind of problems with the translation of a website I am building (hidden link).
Originally I created it using English as the main language but my client is from a Spanish speaking country and as we are going through the automatic translation from English to Spanish, which are not consistent with my client’s requirements and the text keep changing to the translated version from English.
Can I change the main language in WPML without affecting the whole structure of the website?
Languages: English (English )German (Deutsch )French (Français )
Timezone: Europe/Zagreb (GMT+02:00)
Hi,
Thank you for contacting WPML support!
You can change site default language like this, so on WPML -> languages. However note that even in such case, pages that were created in English will have to be translated from English to other languages, more precisely if you change the site default language, it will not change the language of already created pages.
In general changing default language does not alter the structure, what it can do though is that for example if your homepage is not translated it will show 404, so you need to take care of that.
Thanks for your prompt reply Bruno. Right now I have 5 languages, generated from the English text I originally created the website, and I am trying to understand what you are saying… so, if I change the language to Spanish, what will happen to the German, Italian and French pages that were translated from English, and how would they become broken? What would be the best way to do it? Creating a staging site in Spanish and then let WPML do the translations on the other 4 languages?
I am having enough trouble right now with global settings being randomly changed to other languages to have to deal with broken pages.
Languages: English (English )German (Deutsch )French (Français )
Timezone: Europe/Zagreb (GMT+02:00)
Given that you translated them all, nothing will happen, everything should work as it is, the only difference now is that when somebody opens your website, they will land on the Spanish home page first and not English.
Thanks Bruno, that wouldn’t be a problem due to the location of the company, but can I safely use language redirect so the site opens according to the browser language?
Bruno, I just read the article on the link, it makes sense, I guess I will leave it in Spanish as it is a Latin American company, and people can choose the language.
One more question about languages: when I set up WPML I chose Automatic translation for Translation Mode and I chose “Only Myself” on the options since I am doing it all by myself. On the translation Management section I found Translators for every language I use in the website, 5 rows of languages, and I deleted 4 rows leaving just one, but I am not sure I did the right thing.
On the screenshot I am attaching you can see how it looks now (since I changed the main language everything changed to Spanish, including the language of WP dashboard!!), could you please tell me if that looks alright? since Spanish is now the main language, should Spanish be first or that doesn’t affect the order of translations?
As for the Spanish language in the backend, it will not influence the translations because it goes one way anyway - the original content, which can be created in any language, is always the first language from which you translate to other languages.
Also note that now when Spanish is the site default language, if you create a new page or post, it will have Spanish language assigned by default.
Bruno, I hope you can help me with a new issue I have, I opened another ticket but I haven’t been helped. I am trying to change the Spanish flag to Ecuador’s flag by changing the language, but the flag is not changing. The only option I have, apart from changing the hreflang is to upload a flag but checking into WPML plugin, the flat exists within the files. What am I doing wrong?
