[Escalated to WPML Developers team] Updating existing strings

Our in-house developer has found a workaround.

We realised that creating a new comment record in the database wouldn’t have helped—so we gave it some more thought.

We then traced the WPML functionality responsible for registering missing reviews and ended up pinpointing the exact function that looks for them via a query.

We studied it and made the necessary adjustments, and that’s how we managed to identify the truly missing reviews—specifically, those containing emoticons.

If you believe this could help improve WPML and make it a bit more “intelligent,” we’re happy to share the modified code. However, just to be clear, this solution came at a cost, since our developer is a paid freelancer. So we’d really appreciate receiving at least some translation credits in return for contributing to the improvement.

While we were carrying out further checks, we also noticed that WPML completely ignores replies to reviews. For instance, if we receive a negative review and want to reply to it, WPML doesn’t scan those responses at all.

Is that something you’re aware of?

I applied the modification to the woocommerce-multilingual\classes\Reviews\Translations\Mapper.php file by replacing the query in the getUnregisteredReviews function from:

$q = "SELECT c.comment_ID, c.comment_post_ID, c.comment_content, c.comment_type, tr.language_code, st.name, st.value
FROM {$this->wpdb->comments} AS c
LEFT JOIN {$this->wpdb->prefix}icl_translations AS tr
ON tr.element_id = c.comment_post_ID AND tr.element_type = 'post_product'
LEFT JOIN {$this->wpdb->prefix}icl_strings AS st
ON c.comment_content = st.value
AND st.context = '" . FrontEndHooks::CONTEXT . "'
WHERE c.comment_type = '" . FrontEndHooks::COMMENT_TYPE . "'
AND st.name IS null";

to:

$q = "
SELECT comment_ID, comment_post_ID, comment_content, comment_type, null as language_code, null as name, null as value
FROM {$this->wpdb->comments}
WHERE comment_ID NOT IN (
SELECT comment_ID
FROM {$this->wpdb->comments} c
LEFT JOIN {$this->wpdb->prefix}icl_strings s on concat('product-',c.comment_post_ID,'-review-',c.comment_ID) = s.name
WHERE s.context = '" . FrontEndHooks::CONTEXT . "'
)
AND comment_type = '" . FrontEndHooks::COMMENT_TYPE . "'
";

Please go ahead and run your own tests. As a reminder, this is how we got WPML to finally detect all reviews containing emoticons.

Regarding replies to negative reviews, we discovered that our responses are actually classified as comments—not reviews. LOL! That’s why WPML doesn’t recognise them at all.

So the question now is: if we manage to get WPML to treat these replies to negative reviews as strings and have them appear in the String Translator, will WPML be able to handle them properly?

The support cleanup robot is asking me for an update. However, there isn’t one at the moment – we need more time to figure out how to proceed. We’d rather ask if, in light of everything we’ve discussed, you’re considering taking any steps to resolve the issue or improve the underlying system.

Hi Bruno, the sandbox is pointless in this case because the installation is recent. The issue is believed to occur with an older installation with a WPML that’s been around for years—just like ours.

That said, we managed to resolve the issue using the code I sent you. So even if you were to investigate further, I doubt you’d uncover much. Don’t you have any older sites you could take a look at?

After all, you mentioned that this is a known issue that’s been observed before: reviews containing emoticons aren’t being taken into account.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I can help you any further.

However, I’d be interested to know whether you think it would be worthwhile to reflect on the matter of replies to reviews, which currently aren’t considered. Honestly, that’s quite baffling, don’t you think?

When someone leaves you a bad review on TrustPilot, do you respond or just ignore it and leave the customer hanging?

I can’t access the sandbox—it’s asking me for a username and password.

I ran a test—but I see you had already done the same. When replying to a review, the string isn’t imported. I replied to another review, and the exact same thing happened.

So the issue is real: WPML doesn’t handle replies to reviews. And yet, negative reviews happen—and it’s important to be able to respond to them. And if we’re using WPML to translate reviews into other languages, it only makes sense to be able to translate the replies too.

Don’t you think?

Could you please forward this to the relevant team?

We’re currently testing your workaround, and also trying to see if we can somehow stop the import of strings when a review is still pending moderation and hasn’t been published yet.

That said, I just want to express how surprised we are at how behind WPML seems to be in this area. We’re the ones having to patch things up (and pay a freelance developer on top of that) for what appear to be fairly basic issues—things that really should be handled by default.

Just as a reminder, we’re talking about reviews being automatically imported as strings—even when comment moderation is active in WordPress—and the lack of native support for translating replies to reviews.

Bruno, you’re extremely professional, and I truly appreciate that. But I really must ask you to escalate these issues to whoever is responsible.

It’s honestly absurd that WPML doesn’t handle these things by default.

If you allow translation of reviews into multiple languages, then it’s only right that you allow translation of the replies as well—which, I repeat, are a key part of managing a successful E-Commerce operation.

What I’m pointing out are features that should already be accounted for by WPML, and they deserve to be taken seriously.

Let me put it like this—if WPML receives a negative but well-reasoned review, and it’s worth replying to, what do you do? Ignore it? I doubt it. I imagine you do respond.

And perhaps more importantly, WordPress includes a built-in review moderation feature. It’s widely adopted—Amazon, TrustPilot, and many major platforms moderate reviews before they’re published. And we do the same.

So why does WPML import review strings immediately, even when they’re still in the moderation queue?

We had to fix this ourselves, by paying an external developer—and that really shouldn’t be necessary.

What I’m asking is that you bring this to the attention of the developers directly—without waiting for hundreds of feature requests to pile up on the forum. Sometimes it’s just a matter of common sense.