Background of the issue:
I'm setting up the WPML plugin on a site under development and I have a few questions about its functionality.
Symptoms:
N/A
Questions:
What happens if I duplicate the content before the translation, and what if I don't?
What does the language switcher look like on the front-end if I translate only a few pages? The pages I don't translate won't have a switcher, right?
Can automated translations be corrected manually afterward, if needed?
Thanks for your questions! Setting up WPML on a development site is always an exciting step, and it’s great to see you exploring the plugin’s functionality. Let’s go over your concerns together to make everything clear.
When it comes to duplicating content before translating, it’s worth noting that duplicating creates a copy of the original content in the secondary language. This is helpful if we want to maintain the original layout or content structure while still having the flexibility to update translations later. If we choose not to duplicate content before translating, the translations will start fresh, and any specific formatting or structure from the original won’t automatically carry over.
About the language switcher, if only some pages are translated, those pages will have the language switcher visible on the front-end. Pages without translations won’t have any language switcher showing up, so visitors won’t encounter incomplete or untranslated content—it keeps the user experience clean and focused.
For automated translations, the good news is that they can absolutely be corrected manually afterward! WPML’s Advanced Translation Editor makes it simple to tweak any automatically translated content, so we can ensure everything reads exactly the way we want.
I hope that you will find this information helpful.
Thank you! Please let me know if duplicated content will be stored in my WP. I'm worried about the website speed. Also, we'll be translating LearnDash courses so if I duplicate will copies be in my WP? Thanks!
I'm unsure what you mean by "duplicated content will be stored in my WP."
What will exist in the database is the same content.
So yes, duplicating means practically copying the same content from the default language (which exists in the database) to another post/page (with a different ID, so yes, the duplicated content will be assigned to the new translated version of the page/post).
Any content that exists / that is created in WordPress is usually stored inside the database. Only if the content is stored outside the server and loaded from another server; that's the only moment when the data doesn't exist in the database.
