We noticed today that some of our German translations have reverted to the default language of English, without having changed any WPML settings or the affected Toolset Views, eg hidden link, hidden link
Some elements remain translated, while others not. I tried all the usual steps, cleared WP Rocket Cache/CSS/Prioritiy Elements/Redis Cache, and ran most of the safer less drastic buttons in WPML > Settings > Troubleshooting, including the WPML cache, also optimised the tables.
Also the single posts nanny-ad and job-ad are not being translated correctly. I haven't checked all post types because I presume it's a general issue, since I haven't been making any changes recently.
Thank you for contacting WPML support. I'd be happy to assist you on this issue.
To debug this issue further, I would need to check your site settings once, for this I would need temporary access (wp-admin and ftp) to your site.
So could you please provide me with those details, you will find the needed fields for this below the comment area when you log in to leave your next reply. hidden link
I checked and could not find any clue why this might happen. Would you please test for a minimal installation?
- IMPORTANT STEP! Create a backup of your website. Or better approach will be to test this on a copy/staging version of the website to avoid any disruption of a live website.
- Switch to the default theme such as "TwentyTwenty" by going to "WordPress Dashboard > Appearance > themes".
- Go to "WordPress Dashboard > Plugins" and deactivate all plugins except:
. WPML Multilingual CMS
. WPML String translation
. Toolset Types
. Toolset Blocks
- Check if you can still recreate the issue.
- If not, re-activate your plugins one by one and check the issue each time to find out the plugin that causes the problem.
I will try this tonight or tomorrow. Just wanted to acknowledge your post so the ticket doesn't auto-close. I noticed the issue is also on our dev site. So I can test safer there and get back to you!
The issue appears to be related to the Astra (or Astra child) theme. Changing to 2025 theme immediately resolves the issue.
So what could be the issue here? I noticed some WPML related changes on Astra's changelog:
Quote:
Astra v4.13.1
Hey everyone 👋
This one is a focused patch, with bugs that have been quietly causing grief for mobile visitors, multilingual sites, WooCommerce stores, and Elementor users. No new features, just things working the way they should.
and specifically:
Customizer text strings reverted to the admin language on the frontend with WPML. Default strings like “Read More”, “Related Posts”, and button labels switched to the admin’s language instead of the visitor’s.
So I am assuming this error crept in then.
However I would be surprised if other customers had not experienced the same issues as Astra is a common theme.
I will open a ticket with Astra support in parallel, however I would also like WPML's take on the issue. Are there any internal discussions between WPML and Astra which would be relevant?
If not, then it might be a new compatibility issue. To be able to report the compatibility issues we need to replicate the issue on a clean installation.
I created a clean installation of WordPress, WPML, and all necessary WPML add-ons.
You can access the WordPress dashboard using the link below: hidden link
Kindly follow the steps below:
- Install Astra theme.
- Try to replicate the issue.
This will help us to report the probable issue to the compatibility team and solve the possible problem faster.
It seems that the new version of Astra is change dand that errata is obsolete now. So I'd appreciate it if you could replicate the same issue ont he installation I mentioend and I will report this.
I passed on your errata to the Astra developers. They have been able to reproduce the error.
They say "I was able to reproduce this on my test site with just WPML String Translation and by adding the text with the [wpml-string] shortcode. We have reported the problem to the developers and hope to resolve it soon."
As I suspected, it appears to be with all strings which are translated using [wpml-string] shortcode (of which we have hundreds on our site!)
Astra has provided us with a patched version 4.13.2.1 of the Astra theme, which seems to resolve the translation of [wpml-string] translations. So I expect they will be bundling the fix into the next release of Astra.
I don't think we need any more help from WPML here.
