Home›Support›English Support›[Resolved] Taxonomies not synced between post translations for taxonomies set to "Translatable (use translatio...
[Resolved] Taxonomies not synced between post translations for taxonomies set to "Translatable (use translatio...
This thread is resolved. Here is a description of the problem and solution.
Problem: If you're experiencing issues where terms from a custom taxonomy set to 'Translatable (use translation if available or fallback to default language)' are not syncing across all translations of a post, especially in languages where the term uses its fallback (default language), this is due to the expected behavior of WPML. Only terms that have a translation in the corresponding language are synced. Solution: To ensure terms are correctly assigned in all languages, including those using fallback, it's important to translate each term into the respective languages. If a term is not translated, it will not sync correctly with translated posts. For a detailed explanation, you can refer to this discussion on our forum: WPML support forum.
If this solution does not apply to your case, or if it seems outdated, we highly recommend checking related known issues at https://wpml.org/known-issues/, verifying the version of the permanent fix, and confirming that you have installed the latest versions of themes and plugins. Should you need further assistance, please open a new support ticket at WPML support forum.
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Background of the issue:
I have a custom taxonomy set to 'Translatable (use translation if available or fallback to default language)'. When I create a post and assign terms of this taxonomy, these terms should be synced across all translations of this post.
Symptoms:
Instead, only terms that have a translation in the corresponding language are synced. In languages where the term is shown with its fallback (default language), it is not correctly assigned to the post.
Questions:
Why are terms not syncing across all translations when using fallback to default language?
How can I ensure terms are correctly assigned in all languages, including those using fallback?
Welcome to the WPML support forum. Before passing this thread to my colleague, I would like to share some suggestions and possible solutions for the issues you mentioned.
Sorry for the late response because of the holidays and the high support load. It is not normal here. Thank you for your kind understanding.
This appears to be the expected behavior. Since the custom taxonomy term hasn’t been translated into the secondary language, there are no corresponding database entries for it in that language.
It should work as expected in the secondary languages when the post itself is not translated. To confirm, please try creating a new post with a new taxonomy term and check if it works correctly in the secondary languages.
As a workaround, you can duplicate or translate the taxonomy term into the secondary language.
Please refer to the following documentation for more details and let us know your feedback.
thank you for your reply. You are right, when the post itself is not translated it works. However our use case is a translated post with a taxonomy set to translatable (with fallback). This is important, because the custom taxonomy has over 400 terms where most are the same across all languages.
I think the current behavior is not expected but a bug. As you can see in the second screenshot, WordPress displays the fallback ("Test exists only in DE") as an available term for the english translation. It is just not selected as it should be. If I manually select the term, it is correctly saved to the english translation. Hence I would expect WPML to sync it, as it does with the other terms.
- Set up WPML with German as primary language and English as secondary language
- Create a custom taxonomy (e.g. via a plugin, see example code below)
- Set the taxonomy to 'Translatable (use translation if available or fallback to default language)' in WPML settings.
- Create two terms for this taxonomy in German.
- Translate one term to English.
- Create a German post and translate it to English.
- Assign both custom terms to the original German post.
- The term that has an English translation is correctly synced to the English post, the other one is missing (see screenshots in my first message).
Of course, here are more precise instructions for this step:
- Click "Neuen Beitrag erstellen" ("Create new post") in German and add a test headline.
- Click "Publish".
- In the right sidebar, click on the "+" icon for the English translation.
- The translation editor opens. Translate the test headline and click "Abschließen" ("Complete")
thank you for your reply and for looking into this issue.
How do you determine what is expected behavior? As a user of WPML, I would expect categories to be synced correctly. "It won’t sync correctly" (as you put it) is certainly not expected behavior 😉
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Hi Paola,
thank you, I appreciate the time you took to create the videos. I still disagree that this is expected behavior. Clicking "synchronize taxonomies" and then having the taxonomy disappear from one translation seems like an obvious bug.
But since WPML obviously sees this differently, I will have to look at another solution for my use case.
