Home›Support›English Support›[Escalated to 2nd Tier] Translation of URL with query parameters converts & to & which does not work for Divi Pixel Caro...
[Escalated to 2nd Tier] Translation of URL with query parameters converts & to & which does not work for Divi Pixel Caro...
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Background of the issue:
I am trying to translate a URL attribute for a Divi Pixel Carousel module. The URL I am working with is: hidden link. The issue can be seen on this page: hidden link. I expected the translated URL to be: hidden link.
Symptoms:
Instead of the expected URL, I got: hidden link. All & characters have been changed to &. This change causes the links of the image carousel at the top of the page to not work properly, as the query parameters are partially ignored.
Questions:
How can I prevent & from being converted to & in translated URLs?
Why are the query parameters being ignored in the Divi Pixel Carousel module?
For your convenience, the default language is English in the sandbox project.
I setup the "Sample Page" with the widget (or module in DIVI terminology) in question.
The page in default language is here: hidden link
If you search the page's source for "bellfood" you'll find the following correct snippet:
<script type="text/javascript">
var et_link_options_data = [{"class":"difl_imagecarouselitem_0","url":"https:\/\/career.bellfoodgroup.com\/en\/vacancies?job_filter_group%5B%5D=2378&location%5B%5D=5223+Pfaffst%C3%A4tt&category_field%5B%5D=1185&dateSort=desc","target":"_blank"},{"class":"difl_imagecarouselitem_1","url":"https:\/\/career.bellfoodgroup.com\/en\/vacancies?job_filter_group%5B%5D=2378&location%5B%5D=5223+Pfaffst%C3%A4tt&category_field%5B%5D=2365&dateSort=desc","target":"_blank"}];
</script>
(see snippet-default image)
I translated the page in the usual way, using the advanced translation editor:
WPML -> Translation Dashboard
Select page and "Translate myself"
WPML -> Translations
Translate page
Search for "https"(without the quotes) to see the links.
The translated page is than available here: hidden link
If you search the translated page's source for "bellfood" you'll find the following INCORRECT snippet:
<script type="text/javascript">
var et_link_options_data = [{"class":"difl_imagecarouselitem_0","url":"https:\/\/career.bellfoodgroup.com\/de\/offene-stellen?job_filter_group%5B%5D=2378&location%5B%5D=5223+Pfaffst%C3%A4tt&category_field%5B%5D=1185&dateSort=desc","target":"_blank"},{"class":"difl_imagecarouselitem_1","url":"https:\/\/career.bellfoodgroup.com\/de\/offene-stellen?job_filter_group%5B%5D=2378&location%5B%5D=5223+Pfaffst%C3%A4tt&category_field%5B%5D=2365&dateSort=desc","target":"_blank"}];
</script>
(see snippet-translated image)
As you can see, the & characters have been changed to HTML entities, which does not work in this context.
The result is that the query parameters are not passed correctly to the job portal page of the customer.
If you click on an image of the original language, you'll see a page with exactly one (1) company, location and category selected.
In contrast, on the translated page, you end up with a page where only the company is selected, but the location and category are NOT selected.
Using the WordPress editor for the pages in the live project would be difficult because it contains a lot of global modules that are shared between pages.
Translating these (again) with the page in question would likely lead to conflicts or inconsistencies.
Also, the WordPress editor is quite cumbersome to use for translators.
Thank you for the detailed setup and for reproducing the issue so clearly.
The behavior isn’t actually caused by WPML itself, but by how the DiviFlash plugin handles URLs coming from WPML’s Translation Editor.
WPML’s Advanced Translation Editor automatically encodes special characters (for example, & → &) to ensure valid HTML. This is standard and expected behavior across translation systems.
However, the DiviFlash carousel doesn’t decode those entities when rendering the translated URL, so instead of interpreting & as &, it keeps it as text, which breaks the query string.
Since DiviFlash isn’t listed as officially compatible with WPML, I’d recommend contacting their developers and sharing this detail. Once the module properly decodes encoded URLs, the links will work fine with WPML’s Translation Editor.
Thank you for forwarding the details to DiviFlash and for the update. I completely understand your frustration, it’s never ideal to be caught between different products.
No worries, the sandbox will stay active for 6 days after the last login, so their team should have enough time to investigate the issue.
It took some time to get the issue explained, but finally they were able to reproduce and investigate it.
Unfortunately, they were not able to provide a solution because based on their investigation it seems to be a general problem in translating URL attributes in DIVI.
They created an example using the standard DIVI Image module showing the same problem:
In English: hidden link
In German: hidden link
The translation editor content looks fine to me (see screenshot df-test-translation.png)
This is the full text of the relevant message:
"""
It seems that the URL is unable to parse the job filter, location, and category parameters after translation in the front end. Both the DiviFlash Image Carousel module and
Divi’s default modules behave the same way in this case. To verify this, we also tested the behavior using Divi’s default Image module and observed the same issue.
This indicates that the problem is not specific to our module but rather a general behavior in Divi modules.
For better clarification, we created a test page and added both the DiviFlash Image Carousel and Divi’s default Image module using the same link settings.
Both modules behaved identically in our tests. You can check the results on the following pages:
In English: hidden link
In German: hidden link
Let us know if you have any other questions.
"""
Now, how do I proceed to get the link properly translated?
Sorry for the delay, I was off during the weekend (Friday–Saturday). Thank you for the detailed update and for sharing DiviFlash’s findings. That’s very helpful.
Since the same behavior occurs with the default Divi Image module, it looks like the issue comes from how Divi handles encoded URLs when content is translated through the Advanced Translation Editor.
I’ll go ahead and escalate this case to our 2nd tier team so they can review it further and check if there’s a possible workaround or if there are any other suggestions.
