<b>Background of the issue: </b>
I’m using WPML on my multilingual site, and I want to localize the pagination URL base /page/ for each language. Currently, it remains in English across all languages, such as Danish: /page/2/ instead of /side/2/ and French: /page/2/ instead of /page-fr/ or /page-french/. My goal is to have fully localized pagination URLs for better user experience and consistency, without hurting SEO.
<b>Symptoms: </b>
The pagination URL base /page/ remains in English across all languages.
<b>Questions: </b>
Does WPML currently offer any built-in way to translate the pagination_base (the /page/ part of paginated URLs) so it reflects the active language?
Is this something WPML intentionally keeps untranslated for compatibility or SEO reasons?
Can you provide a solution that automatically handles this translation while ensuring SEO best practices, including correct canonical URLs and hreflang output?
Has WPML considered adding a dedicated setting for this in String Translation or another part of the plugin?
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.
For your kind updates, achieving this is not easy, even with extensive custom code. WordPress uses a single global pagination word (/page/), controlled by the core pagination_base setting, so there is no per-language pagination base. To vary it by language, you need extensive custom rewrite rules for every language and archive type, an approach that is complex, breakable, and can hurt performance.
For UX and SEO, it is perfectly fine to keep /page/ as it is. Google mainly cares that each language has correct hreflang links; the path word itself doesn’t need translating.
Therefore, it is better to avoid this. Please refer to the following documentation for more details and let us know your feedback.
