We have a site that is in both French and English. English is the language that is used by the site administrators.
In the WPML language settings for the user, we have the checkbox unchecked to ensure that the WordPress interface is in English. However, this doesn't seem to translate to the Elementor interface. When we edit a French page, Elementor itself with all of its buttons and actions is in French. This is very confusing for our admin who don't know French.
We have read about the fix to remove the .mo and .po files, as well as all of the Elementor and Elementor Pro json files - however each time there is a new version of Elementor the files are replaced. So this isn't a good long-term solution.
How do we ensure that the Elementor interface is in English and not French?
I have already looked at those fixes and none of them work for us...
One of the solutions offered, and which we had already done prior to contacting you (see my initial message) was to change the user profile to the admin language to the primary language. This is great... but it works for everything *BUT* Elementor!
And the other solution was to delete the .mo and .po (and json) files. However this requires someone to also delete these files every time there is an update!!! And the site editors don't and can't for security reasons have access to ftp!
If we change the language in the admin area (in the user profile) to use the primary language it should follow that Elementor as a plugin in admin area using should follow this too. This issue makes your plugin not useable by anyone that isn't fluent in all of the website languages. Which is completely impractical!!
I don't understand how this can possibly be expected, or even acceptable behaviour!
Your site says that WPML is fully compatible with Elementor, but this can't be the case if we can't actually use the plugin to edit the pages.
Your plugin is even blocking us from setting the language of Elementor/Elementor Pro. Here is how Elementor suggests we change the language of their editor, but we can't do it because WPML doesn't allow us to. hidden link
If it is as simple as removing those .po, .mo and json pages, there must be another solution to ensure that they are never added back again once they are removed or just ignored from the outset?
We are using WPML for a lot of our sites and really like the plugin. Please work to provide us with a solution to this issue.
I can understand that this is not the perfect scenario for you but that is how Elementor works with WPML in regard to the language interface of the Elementor builder.
What they are showing here, in the URL that you mentioned (hidden link), is how to change the builder language + the WordPress admin language, but that's not the case for a website that has multiple languages set up.
Elementor works with WPML and if someone wants to use the manual translation method (https://wpml.org/documentation/translating-your-contents/using-different-translation-editors-for-different-pages/) and edit the translated page straight into Elementor, that's doable, and most of the time, editing the content or adding new blocks is mostly done by clicking around the different icons in the builder. I do agree that it would be even better if you can have it into whatever language you want, but the only workaround for that is the one mentioned or, you can use the browser's translation functionality (chrome for example has the option to translate a page into what language you want in real-time), to see the page in your preferred language.
The fact that new files are added when you update Elementor (or any other plugin) is the normal WordPress behavior when it does a plugin update so yes, you would just need to remove those files when they are added back in.
Sorry if this is not exactly what you are looking for but that is how things are working for now between WPML and the Elementor language interface.
There are certain limitations to keeping the Elementor Module labels in the default language via codes due to the fact that Elementor is a front-end editor, as my colleague mentioned and that will generate higher loading time for pages.
We officially recommend WPML Editor for translating the post/page created using Elementor.
Thanks for your response. I appreciate that you are trying to help us navigate this issue.
This client has 5 separate websites and Elementor updates on average 2-4 times per month, as does Elementor Pro. So it really doesn't work for the client to contact me every time they want to make any change to the site to then have us remove those files. From a user perspective this makes edits horribly inefficient and expensive.
And your suggestion to use the WPML Editor doesn't work for them because the content and layout differs between the French and English pages.
So the work-arounds really aren't tenable for the long-term.
**** We would gladly trade some performance of the Elementor Editor for the ability to use it. Is it possible to put this in as a feature request? (Especially as Elementor has 5+million plus installations and we can't be the only ones with this issue.)
Lastly, we may have another work around that works better for us.... We have found that by renaming the "Languages" folder (ie. wp-content/languages) this actually stops the files within the plugin folder from updating. When we have tried this, everything appears to continue to work - ie. Elementor appears to continue to work and the language switch etc seems to function. We are wondering, though, if there are any long-term issues with restricting access to this folder?
We see this error message in the WordPress interface, but are not sure if this is an issue or not for us, in how we are editing the site:
"WPML String Translation is attempting to write .mo files with translations to folder:
/home/customer/www/anad41.sg-host.com/public_html/wp-content/languages
This folder appears to be not writable. This is blocking translation for strings from appearing on the site.
To resolve this, please contact your hosting company and request that they make that folder writable.
For more details, see WPML's documentation on troubleshooting .mo files generation.."
Can you please confirm with your team if making the Languages folder not writable is okay as a work around?
Hello,
My name is Carlos and I will continue working on this ticket
As explained by my colleague Mihai, the only workarounds are the ones mentioned in his and your messages. I understand this is not the ideal scenario for you but it is the only workaround we have. If you would like to try to find a custom solution I recommend you to contact one of our certified partners at this link: https://wpml.org/contractors/ they will be more than happy to help you.
Regarding the 'solution' of re-naming or restricting the languages folder: this will cause problems with WPML, as you can see it's necessary to String Translation to write in that particular folder. So, it's not a solution that will solve this problem with Elementor.
Thanks for your answer... We aren't using the String Translations at all. We are just editing the content on each page independently as our French and English pages differ. We can even deactivate the String Translation plugin.
Will there still be an issue for us if we stop WPML from writing to that folder?
Also can you please confirm whether the ability to use the Elementor editor in the native language can be added as a feature request to a future version of WPML?
1.- You might not be using String Translation, but WPML uses it to translate parts of the content in Elementor, so you shouldn't deactivate it and you shouldn't change the writing permission on the languages folder. I understand that with every update in the Elementor plugin, you have to re-name the .mo/.po files but this is the only workaround we can offer to solve this problem and it takes only a minute to do, so it doesn't require too much time, effort or resources.
2.- Yes, the ability to use the Elementor editor in the native language will be added as a feature request to a future version of WPML.
Thanks for your reply. It is wonderful to know that it will be fixed in a future version! Is there any sense of timing for this?
The reason that I am asking is that it isn't a simple thing that doesn't require much time or effort. This client has 5 separate sites, and both Elementor and Elementor Pro each do their own updates, not always on the same schedule and each one updates between 2-4 times a month. So the files need to be removed from the various sites somewhere between 10 - 40 times each month!
Plus the people actually doing the website editing don't have access to FTP to remove those files, which means that when they log in to make a change they need to contact me, wait for me to remove those files before they can make their site changes. This makes it incredibly time consuming, inefficient and costly.
I appreciate your help! Thanks for taking the time to answer my many questions.
I understand your concern, unfortunately, we 1st tier supporters don't have an ETA for the release that contains the fix for this issue. I recommend keeping an eye on our blog and announcements and/or the changelog for the next releases of the plugin.
One way to go about this, so that FTP access and manual file deletion aren't required is to use the Loco Translate plugin. It is made for translating themes and plugins, rather than content, so does not conflict with WPML.
Here's how to use Loco Translate to force Elementor (or any other plugin on your site) to remain in English:
1. Install and activate the "Loco Translate" plugin on your WordPress site.
2. Go to "Loco Translate" > "Plugins" and find the "Elementor/Elementor Pro" plugin.
3. You can either add English as a new language or simply delete any other language profiles that are present.
4. Save the changes and reload the Elementor editor to see if it remains in English when editing pages in additional languages.
