Background of the issue:
I’m building a multilingual website using WPML and Yoast SEO. Everything works fine for posts written in the site’s default language (Portuguese), but for translated posts (e.g., English), Yoast SEO fails to detect transition words and other readability checks. I’ve ensured that the WPML SEO plugin is installed and active, and the translated content is complete and grammatically correct.
Symptoms:
Yoast SEO not detecting transition words in translated posts, even when clearly recognized transition words are included.
Questions:
Why does Yoast SEO fail to detect transition words in posts?
How can I optimize content for other languages effectively using WPML and Yoast SEO?
1. Yoast SEO transition words are words like “however”, “therefore”, “in addition”, “for example”, etc., which are used to improve text flow and readability. Yoast analyzes their presence and highlights if they are missing in the content.
The issue is that for posts written in other languages (not the site's default), Yoast fails to detect any transition words, even when they are clearly present in the text. For example, in an English post, I use transition words like “however” or “in contrast”, but Yoast still flags the “transition words” check as failed.
2. Another readability check that sometimes doesn’t work is the detection of complex words. Even when the vocabulary is simple, Yoast marks the “complex words” percentage as too high.
These problems only occur in posts written in languages different from the site’s default (Portuguese). Posts written in Portuguese work fine.
I'm using WPML to assign a language to each post, but the posts are not translations of each other.
Please give me access to your site and explain where to find the problems you mention. Please also attach a screenshot so I can better understand.
If you need further help with this, please share the access details to your site with me. I'm enabling a private message for the following reply.
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Thanks for the access details and for the detailed steps on replicating the issue. However, you provided me access with limited permissions. I don't even have access to any of WPML's admin screens. Please see the attached screenshot.
According to your description of the problem, it is better that we proceed in the following way. We need to replicate this issue on a fresh WordPress installation. Then I'll be able to escalate it to our compatibility team. For this, I created a test website with a clean WordPress install. You can access it through this link:
hidden link
With this link, you'll be directly logged in.
WPML and Yoast + Pro are already installed on this site.
Please configure WPML and Yoast as set on your site (just the basic configurations needed to replicate the issue are enough).
When everything is finished and you can replicate the problem, please let us know.
Important! Do not import your site to the test site. We must replicate the problem on a fresh, clean WordPress installation.
Thanks for replicating the problem on the sandbox site.
I'm not entirely sure that WPML causes the problem. I'll explain why so. The option to switch between admin languages in the profile page here hidden link is not a WPML feature. It is available there even if WPML is deactivated or, for that matter, never been installed.
Can you please try and see if you get similar results when WPML is deactivated?
In this case, do you still have the problem with the transition words when the user’s profile language does not match the language of the post?
If so, please tell me which page or post to check, and also attach some screenshots.
Please note that my weekend hours are Friday to Saturday. If you need further assistance, I'll be available to continue checking this issue and helping you next week.
Thank you for the clarification. I understand that WPML is not the cause of the issue — I just thought it could be the solution, which is why I focused on testing it first.
I’ll now try reproducing the issue with WPML deactivated and will send you the screenshots along with the page/post details for you to check.
After deactivating WPML, I noticed that Yoast’s analysis only works correctly when I change the site language, not the user’s profile language.
In all the screenshots where the “transition words” (or “palabras de transición”) indicator appears in red, the site language is different from the post’s language.
To reinforce the issue: the Yoast readability analysis is not working according to the post’s language, but instead according to the site language. Our expectation was that, with WPML, Yoast’s analysis would adapt to the language of each post.
However, as I mentioned, the current behavior is that the analysis changes based on the user’s profile language, not the post’s language. This makes the readability checks (such as “transition words”) inaccurate when editing posts in different languages.
Could you please confirm if there is any way to adjust this configuration when WPML is integrated with Yoast?
Thanks for your input on this matter.
I'm consulting our second-tier supporters whether there is something that our developers can do about this case. I'll update you here once I have their reply.
Unfortunately, we lost the copy of the sandbox site where you and I made the tests. However, with a new sandbox site with the latest versions of WPML, Strings Translation, WPML SEO, and the Yoast SEO plugin, we can't replicate the problem. On this new sandbox site, I have English, Spanish, and Portuguese. It does not matter which language is set as the site's default language. It also does not matter which language is set as the user's profile language. And it does not matter if WPML is activated or deactivated. In all the cases, the Readability analysis, including the Transition words, is shown in green. Please see the attached screenshot of the Portuguese page. The latest versions of WordPress and its related plugins may have resolved the issue with Readability analysis. You are welcome to check things yourself on the sandbox site here: hidden link
I want to remind you that you confirmed that the problem occurs even when WPML is not active, and you hoped WPML could fix this issue. From my experience, I can tell that it is not common for us to fix problems that WPML did not create. However, at this point, as I mentioned, I can't even see the problem without WPML. If you can demonstrate how WPML is related to the issue, we will be happy to continue investigating.
Again, I want to apologize for the time it took us to get back to you.
