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[Resolved] WPML Media Translation – Media not duplicated to other languages for Editor role
This thread is resolved. Here is a description of the problem and solution.
Problem: You are encountering an issue where media items are not being duplicated in secondary languages when uploaded by an Editor, despite the settings in WPML → Media Translation being configured to duplicate texts (alt, caption, title) for all media and featured images across all languages. This problem does not occur with an Administrator role. Solution: We have identified that this issue may be related to the visibility settings of languages. Here are the steps we recommend: 1. Ensure that the languages are not hidden. If they are hidden, the media won't be duplicated into other languages. 2. If hiding languages is necessary for your workflow, consider setting all translations to be drafts or under review, which keeps them non-public similar to hidden languages. 3. An additional setting allows Admins to specify whether an individual user can see hidden language content. This setting is found in the user profile section and must be activated on a user-by-user basis by an Admin.
If these steps do not resolve your issue or if the solution seems outdated or irrelevant to your specific case, we highly recommend checking related known issues at https://wpml.org/known-issues/, verifying the version of the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. If the problem persists, please open a new support ticket.
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Hi WPML team,
we’ve identified what appears to be a bug in WPML Media Translation (latest version).
In WPML → Media Translation, we have disabled the option:
“Automatically detect best options for translating image texts (alt, caption, title)”
Instead, we are using the following manual setup:
- Duplicate texts (alt, caption, title) for all media to all languages – enabled for existing and new content
- Duplicate image texts (alt, caption, title) for all featured images to all languages – enabled for existing and new content
The issue:
When uploading a new image in the default language, no media duplicates are created in the Media Library for the secondary languages.
Important detail:
- With an Administrator role, everything works as expected.
- With an Editor role, the duplication does not happen automatically anymore.
Interestingly, when an Editor manually goes to WPML → Media Translation and translates a media item there, the image only then becomes visible in the Media Library for the secondary language.
This behavior seems inconsistent and role-dependent, which suggests a bug.
Also important:
This issue is not limited to the site mentioned above — it affects all of our websites.
Could you please confirm whether this is a known issue and whether a fix is planned?
Thanks a lot in advance for your support.
Best regards,
After testing on a fresh install, WPML behaved as expected. Let me share the steps I took:
1. Installed and setup WPML in 2 languages (EN as primary, DE as secondary);
2. Ensured that WPML > Settings > Media Translation matched your settings;
3. With an admin user, I created a page and uploaded an image to it;
4. With an editor user, I created another page and uploaded another image to it;
In both cases, the entry was available in German automatically, as expected. Meaning it was duplicated right after being uploaded.
Before sharing access, please share in detail the steps you took with both users, so I can understand your workflow. Perhaps there's some difference on how you're uploading the images. Thank you
Hi Lucas,
Thanks for your quick feedback and for sharing your test steps! I went ahead and outlined my workflow so you can see how I’m uploading media:
1. I navigate to **Media** in the WP admin.
2. I upload an image **via drag-and-drop** in the default language.
That’s it. It seems that in my setup, the media isn’t automatically duplicated to the secondary language, unlike in your fresh install.
Please let me know if you need any more details, or if there’s a particular setting I should double-check to make sure this works as expected.
When I go to WPML > Languages and hide the secondary language under “Hide languages”, the media upload with a non-admin user no longer works correctly—the images are not duplicated to the other languages.
For the editor user, it’s not possible to switch languages in the Media Library, but the admin user can still do it.
This also matches our workflow: for client projects, we initially hide all secondary languages and start working only in the primary language. Once that’s finalized, we begin translations and prepare everything for a go-live.
I hope this helps clarify what’s happening on our end. Please let me know if this aligns with your understanding, or if there’s a workaround for this scenario.
Thanks for clarifying. Indeed, when languages are hidden, the media won't be duplicated into other languages. I confirmed that on the test website I've created.
There's perhaps one workaround, let me know if it is viable to you: do not hide the languages. I understand the reason, but you could also leave the languages unhidden, and set all translations to be set as drafts, or under review, if you are using auto translations. Drafts and "to be reviewed" translation are not public, so that basically has the same outcome as having a language hidden.
That of course until you finish the project. Let me know your thoughts.
Hi Lucas,
Thanks for checking this and confirming the behavior.
Your workaround would technically work for us. However, the issue is that the language would still appear in the frontend language switcher. That’s something we want to avoid during the development phase.
Aside from that, the workaround would be possible.
That said, we would definitely prefer a clean solution where media is duplicated even when languages are hidden. From our perspective, hiding languages is a very common workflow during project development, so it would be ideal if this scenario was fully supported.
Let me know what you think.
Thanks again for your help!
Yes, you're absolutely right — hiding the language switchers would also be an option.
However, since everything works as expected when logged in with the admin user, I would assume that the behavior should be consistent across all users. That’s why this feels more like unexpected behavior.
Thanks as well for escalating this and getting a second opinion — I appreciate it. I’ll wait for your update.
I've sent your request as a feature request a few days ago, but still haven't received an answer. We can't really offer a timeline for the analysis, but I'll keep you update. Thank you for your patience.
