Background of the issue:
I recently used WPML to automatically translate my entire site, hidden link, to German in bulk. I want to undo this automatic translation and manually translate the site gradually.
Symptoms:
The bulk translation created SEO issues by adding many new URLs quickly and resulted in 404 errors when some German versions of posts and pages were drafted or discarded.
Questions:
How can I completely undo the automatic translation done by WPML?
What steps should I follow to manually translate the site using WPML?
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )German (Deutsch )
Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)
Hello,
If you want to stop the automatic translation, you need to go to WPML > Translation Management > Dashboard and disable "Translate Everything Automatically" in the top right corner of the section.
Now you can control what will be sent to translation and how it should be translated. Create your job, assign it to yourself, and then access the job at WPML > Translation.
Or, simply go for example to Pages > All Pages and use the translation status icons to access the Advanced Translation Editor.
Sorry, that's not quite my issue. The site has already been automatically translated but numerous issues arose from this:
- This suddenly added 500+ URLs to our domain (since the translation is just a /de subfolder, which Google didn't like.
- Many pages were broken or had formatting errors, another thing Google didn't like
- It did a poor job with some of the more technical translations, especially in URLs.
So I want to reverse this and have several questions:
- Do I simply delete all the new pages in the translated /de subfolder at once?
- Can we get our credits back and just manually translate the website in batches over a longer period of time?
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )German (Deutsch )
Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)
1) The site URL format is set at WPML > Languages > Site URL format. WPML will not create a physical subfolder on your server. If you have issues with internal links and their translation, we can offer to take a closer look into this, if you provide some examples.
2) It is expected that each translation uses its own permalink. Google has no issue with languages in directories. They only do not prefer you to use language as parameters as URL structure. Also, WPML offers the option for one domain per language.
3) If you provide us with examples of broken pages, we can investigate further and assist you in solving those issues. I would not suggest deleting the pages.
1) This is a new project to me and I'm not quite sure what you mean. We have long had the domain koronapos.com and now added koronapos.com/de for German version using WPML.
3) for instance, when I click on the pricing section on /de (preisgestaltung) it takes me to this page: hidden link
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )German (Deutsch )
Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)
1) I was just trying to explain, that WPML will build a directory virtually in the background. The /de directory is not an existing directory on your server.
3) The URL /de/?page_id=86737 usually means that the translated page has not yet been published.
Please go to Pages > All Pages and use the language filter to switch to German.
Now, make sure that your translated pages are published.
