I’m having persistent and inconsistent issues with translations disappearing or reverting to the original language across a site using WPML + ACF. I’ll outline what’s happening as clearly as possible:
The issues we’re seeing
Full blocks of translated content sometimes vanish entirely from the WPML translation editor.
e.g. see ATE for the Exploring the Island page (compared to front end which shows translated content which is no longer in the ATE)
Fields that were previously translated are now coming up as 'Flagged' in the ATE, this wasn't done by us or the client, not sure if this is related or what this flagging even means, it's a new development that presumably came from a recent update. (Same example)
In some cases, translations appear correct in the WPML editor but render in English on the secondary-language front-end e.g. link translations.
(This appears to be related to caching, but clearing the Litespeed cache doesn't resolve it - on the temporary site I've set up the issue is resolved - it would be useful to understand why things sometimes appear and sometimes don't)
ACF content appears to be affected at random—no particular field group or post type is consistently failing.
Pattern / reproducibility
There is no consistent reproducible pattern.
The same steps sometimes work and sometimes do not.
This makes it extremely difficult to identify the cause or provide a reliable reproduction case.
What we’ve checked so far
The site has the latest versions of WordPress, WPML, and related plugins.
ACF fields are properly set to “Translate”.
The behaviour is not consistent across all posts/pages.
Other sites we manage using ACF + WPML do not have this issue, so it appears specific to this installation.
Following up on this issue where my colleague left off, as we were not able to fully reproduce would you be able to share a quick screencast using Loom for example showing us the steps taken in order for us to better reproduce this behavior.
Hi, sorry for the delay, I've been attempting to recreate the issue but because I don't know what's causing it it's tricky. What I am finding is that WPML behaves very strangely compared to our other sites in general. It's very unstable.
I'm noticing newly saved and confirmed translations being marked as 'needs an update' a few minutes later (with no changes to the live page). The only changes have been to other pages and other translations since the translation was finished and saved the previous time.
Also there are multiple unchanged fields set to 'mark for review' for no reason
I've done a screen capture showing the issue - I realise I can't prove that these missing fields in the video haven't been updated but I promise that no changes have been made to that page, the fields have been previously translated and appear on the site itself.
I don't appear to be able to share a video so here's a link to a video showing the issue: hidden link
I really need to provide a solution to our client, they work on this site regularly and are finding translation a real problem.
