We are migrating an old, no-wordpress site to WP with WooCommerce and WPML.
The site has these languages:
EN
FR
DE
EL (default)
RU
Everything works fine and every product also has a translated version of itself.
However, in WooCommerce Multilingual & Multicurrency, they appear as if the need sync.
When clicking the sync icon, the translated strings appear as empty in the translation editor.
How can we sync all these products?
Assume the basic scenario where the client needs to edit a product in the FR language.
If they click the pencil, there will be no translated FR strings, even though the FR product exists and works as expected.
We could just instruct them to not use the translator and edit all the secondary languages via editing those products directly from wordpress. But obviously this is not the right solution.
Moreover, it get worse if they add some new products using the correct way (WooCommerce & WPML tanslation editor). If that's the case, the new products should be edited the WPML way (using the + icons and then the sync/pencils icons), but all the old products should be edited using the separate product pages of WooCommerce in each language.
Thank you in advance
PS: we can use WP-all-Import for mass export/import of products if needed?
I'm afraid what you are experiencing is expected. I see you're using the Adavanced Translation Editor, and imported content can't be visualized with it, due to how it works.
However, the content should be visible in the front end, it should be just missing with the editor. But this might be due to how it was imported, since you didn't provide any details about the process.
I would suggest you switch to the Classic Translation Editor (in WPML > Settings) and see if this solves the issue.
If it doesn't, please provide us with more details about your migration process and we'll try to provide a better solution
You are correct, we have no issues in the front-end and everything works as expected.
Currently in the settings we have the Advanced Translation Editor for new translations and the classic editor for translations previously created using Classic Translation Editor.
All the pages and new content was created with the ATE. Only the old products were imported.
So I guess there is no reason to change everything to the classic editor. Correct?
And one last question on the topic.
Do we need to enable the classic translation editor only for the products?
So that if the client needs to edit an old product, they will will not get confused with the pencil icons leading to empty translations?
yes, it's not recommended switching translation editors.
However, it's not possible to use the Classic editor only on a specific Post Type, as the settings are site wide. So in your case I'd try to switch to Classic for all content (please do a backup before, just in case something doesn't work as expected).
I escalated your case a feature request, maybe 2nd tiers can provide a better solution.
Ok, I understand. Will be waiting for a reply from the 2nd tier in case we are missing something.
Regarding the editors, I am thinking of keeping the ATE for everything since all pages were created through that and keep using the classic one only for products (imported or new ones).
I guess this won't be causing any issues, correct?
Just to clarify:
What I am talking about is changing the WPML language from the backend lang selector and then edit the corresponding language of the products as one would normally do with WooCommerce.
Wouldn't this be ok?
Moreover, I noticed that products also have the option not to use the WPML translation editor.
So I guess in our case we could just select "use the WordPress Editor to translate: All WooCommerce Products".
Will this cause any issues?
> What I am talking about is changing the WPML language from the backend lang selector and then edit the corresponding language of the products as one would normally do with WooCommerce.
This would be the same as using the WordPress editor which you mentioned after.
The problem with using the WordPress editor is that if you later in the future want to use again the WPML Translation Editor (no matter which one) all edits you did while using the WordPress editor would be deleted.
