[Resolved] Translated string not showing up in frontend

Hi there.

Before this ticket gets assigned to one of my colleagues, I will try to help.

Explanation of the Issue:

The "Look for strings when rendering pages" option allows WPML to dynamically search for and translate strings during page rendering. When this option is enabled, WPML scans the page for any strings that need translation on-the-fly, ensuring that all strings appear correctly translated on the frontend. Disabling this option means that WPML will rely on previously registered and translated strings. If these strings were not correctly registered or saved, the default language strings (often English) will be displayed instead.

Here are some recommendations to resolve the issue:

1. Ensure All Strings Are Registered:

- Go to WPML > Theme and plugins localization.
- Scan your themes and plugins for any strings that need translation.

2. Re-Register and Translate Strings:

- Go to WPML > String Translation.
- Search for the problematic strings and delete all occurrences.
- Enable the "Look for strings when rendering pages" option.
- Visit the frontend where the strings appear.
- Return to WPML > String Translation, search for the strings again, and add the translations.
- Disable the "Look for strings when rendering pages" option.
- This method helps in ensuring that the strings are correctly registered and translated in the database without the need for dynamic rendering each time

3. Check Database Charset Configuration:

- Ensure that your database charset in `wp-config.php` is set to `utf8mb4` instead of `utf8` to support a wider range of characters, including symbols and special character.

4. Regenerate .mo Files:

- Go to WPML > Support > Troubleshooting.
- Look for the option to regenerate .mo files. This can help in ensuring that the translations are correctly compiled and recognized by the system

Here is also a list of existing tickets on this same topic:
hidden link

Following these steps should help in resolving the issue where translated strings are only showing when the "Look for strings when rendering pages" option is enabled.

Please let us know how things go.

Mihai Apetrei

Hi there.

Thank you for the update.

Maybe there is some caching active?

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I will be waiting for your response.

Hi there and thank you for your patience.

The issue here is that the string that you are referring to ("month") is added to the website through custom CSS as you will see in the screenshots I'm attaching. The strings from your screenshots are different ones and not the ones showing on the front end.

So, you will need to use CSS to "translate" that content.

Custom coding falls out of the purpose of our support policy but I will be happy to share an example for Swedish and you can use this example for the other languages.

Please add the following code to your website's backend > Appearance > Customizer > Custom CSS > and then save it:

html[lang="sv-SE"] #wcfm-main-contentainer .wcfm_membership_box_head .wcfm_membership_price .amount:after {
    content: "/månad";
}

Now, you should see the correct string in Swedish.

I hope that you will find this information helpful.

Thank you very much for making things clearer for me.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to translate this string with String Translation because it's added into JavaScript and not localized.

WordPress currently only offers a localization API in PHP, not directly in JavaScript.

To fix this and make the text translatable, you can use the "wp_localize_script" function: https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/wp_localize_script/

For more details, please check the reply from my colleague here: https://wpml.org/forums/topic/string-translation-138/#post-9698875

Kindly note that custom programming work is beyond the scope of our support. If the above suggestions didn't help or you're unsure about how to achieve it, we suggest contacting one of our 3rd party contractors that specialize in custom work with WPML
https://wpml.org/contractors/

Hi there and welcome back!

Yes, I just wanted to confirm that this is the way to go, the right direction, but in our case, at some point, it seems that something goes wrong and needs to be properly debugged on a deeper level.

However, this approach where translations are introduced via JS/jQuery requires custom work.

While we are able to provide some quick recommendations and directions like I did above, implementing or debugging custom code falls out of the scope of our Support Policy.

That is why I mentioned above that you will need the help of a WPML contractor or a developer to properly debug and implement this custom solution.

We have a very big database of amazing customers and it would literally be impossible to help each client that needs custom implementations for their site even though we would love from all our heart to be able to do that.

I hope this explains the situation a bit better.

Thank you very much for your understanding and cooperation.

Mihai