[Closed] Multilingual automatic translation triggers several errors

Hello!
1)

You write on the website that already translated pages are not translated again

This only happens when there aren't changes on the page. if a change is detected then it will be translated again, however that doesn't mean it will be translated from scratch. the translation memory will be used and only the new content will be really translated.

2) You mention something about duplicated media. media needs to be duplicated in every language you have available. however the actual media file is not duplicated, it's just an entry in the database that links to the different languages, to make the same media file available in all languages. however you should not see each image 9 times in the library, if that's what you meant.

3)

overwrote links on the button for already translated languages and thus made them unusable.

did you manually update the links on the translated languages? because that is also not something you should do if you have a system translating things automatically. if you give me more details about this, i may be able to provide a proper solution to your situation 🙂

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It seems like you want to have more control over the translations and in that case then maybe you want to use this setting instead: https://wpml.org/documentation/automatic-translation/#translating-individual-pages-posts-and-other-content-automatically

you can still send the content in bulk and have it translated only once, so you can then modify them whenever you want. would that be something you'd like to have?

1)

we did not change anything on the already translated pages and yet they were automatically re-translated by WPML. How to turn this off?

What makes you think this? apart from the links you mention getting lost was there something else that showed you there was a translation made or updated?

2) Have you recently reset WPML? because what you're showing me in the attachments about the media duplication problem, tells me that at one point WPML actually got reset, and the images from all the languages passed to be "language-less" so they appear all in one place. however if you installed and setup WPML again, then those 9 images would be duplicated by the amount of languages.

We can help you have this fixed but i'd like you to answer my questions first, as to not caused any unintentional harm with a possible fix.

3) can you please tell me how you are overwriting the button links, please?

Perfect, thanks for the answer.

I suppose you sent the content to translate via maybe a translation service or well outside the translation editor from WPML, correct?

The only way this could've happened if when a page didn't contain any translation in the translation editor (as when you upload a translation manually, used the classic translation editor and switched to the Advanced Translation Editor afterwards or used a translation service to translate the content).

1) Would you be so kind to let me know how did you send the content to translate?

2) To investigate the media issue, instead, I kindly ask you to grant me access to the wp-admin area of your website.

I have enabled the necessary fields on my end so you can provide them to me in a secure and private manner. This way, only the two of us will be able to view them.

If possible and for your safety, i'd suggest you create a new user (a fake one with a fake mail) that you can later delete when the ticket is closed.

I verified the problem about the automatic translation and as i thought, it's not that it's "constantly" translating, it's that the original language is constantly being saved and when that happens you end up telling WPML to translate. however that is not taking credits from you because most of the times the content is already translated.

You can see all the details here: hidden link

Thankfully nothing wrong is happening there (technically, i know the outcome is not the one you want and we will take care of that soon).

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About the things you want to avoid:

1) please watch this video: hidden link

The problem here was a mix of things. you have WordPress quite updated but WPML has not been updated since november 2022 and you don't have enough memory to handle your site and overall WPML.

All the problems i can see started on august 8, but from the traces i have been able to gather, you've been using WPML for years, so could it also be that you had an import of content on august 8th with a plugin like wp all import or something similar?

Anyways, i suspect that the following 2 actions will help here:

1.1) WPML needs a minimum of 128MB of memory to work correctly and it seems you are not meeting this (and other plugins ) requirement.

Kindly add this code into your wp-config.php file, right after the database information:

 
define ('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M');

1.2) Go to WPML -> Support -> Troubleshooting

Press the following buttons:

• "Clear the cache in WPML"
• "Remove ghost entries from the translation tables"
• "Fix element_type collation"
• "Set language information"
• "Fix post type assignment for translations"

Of course, only do this after a proper backup, just out of security.

2) About the automatic translation, please watch this video: hidden link

You can't use "translate everything" and then "select" what you want to translate and what you don't, because as the title suggests, translate everything fully automates the translation process, for everything.

Instead, it seems you want to use "translate some" in WPML > Settings, which will not translate the content as soon as you publish it but will give you full control over what content to translate, how and in what languages.

These 2 points will probably solve all or almost all your problems, however i'd actually suggest that:

- You make a backup before you make these changes (treat them as "checkpoints". you can create backups before every major change)
- Maybe let us know when you're about to make the changes so we can be here for you and guide you whenever you have doubts or catch the issues as they arise (if they do).

Regards.