Background of the issue:
I am trying to translate content from English to Italian using WPML. I noticed that symbols are being incorrectly inserted in the translation. For example, in the Italian translation, there is an unnecessary space and a quotation mark (") instead of no space and an Apostrophe (') .
This issue has only started happening in the last couple of days.
It does not happen in ALL situations but just in random segments.
e.g.
Eng - During bad weather, the National Parks office will issue weather alerts and close some of the paths.
IT ATE translation - In caso di maltempo, l “ufficio dei Parchi Nazionali emette un” allerta meteo e chiude alcuni sentieri.
It should read like this:
In caso di maltempo, l'ufficio dei Parchi Nazionali emette un'allerta meteo e chiude alcuni se
Symptoms:
Symbols are being incorrectly inserted in the Italian translation, such as a space and a backslash after certain letters. This issue is new and requires manual correction for each segment.
Questions:
Why are symbols being incorrectly inserted in the Italian translation?
How can I ensure that translations in other languages like German, French, and Spanish are correct without manually checking each segment?
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )Italian (Italiano )
Timezone: Europe/Rome (GMT+02:00)
Hello,
We are aware of these issues and they actually don't come from us but the translation engines.
Most of the times it's Deepl the one that does that and it does it because it thinks it's the "correct" grammar for it. We've tried several times asking them to allow us to have more control over it but for them that's a feature, not a bug or something that should be improved.
If you use Microsoft or WPML AI, You should not see this problem happening often or at all and we're working on improving our entire systems to try to find ways to have more control on things like this.
For the translated content, I suggest you manually fix them if it's possible. I know it's not the best answer but rest assured we are working to solve that problem 🙂
Thanks for your response. You are right it is not the response I was hoping for.
1. It is actually hard to find these segments. I need to read/scan through each segment as it happens randomly.
2. Trying to search for - “ or l “ in the ATE does not seem to work. It either shows up a lot of irrelevant segments or nothing at all. Is there a way to search all segments containing “ in the ATE?
3. If I find an incorrect segment in Italian and then copy and paste the English version into DeepL online- it translates with correct punctuation. So are we sure it is just the DeepL engine?
4. For me I can sort out Italian, but how do I know that all the time and money spent translating French, German and Spanish is not producing incorrect translations also? I am always checking and correcting mistakes (most often with the markers and stranges spacing etc) but punctuation is another thing entirely.
5. I thought it was advised to select an engine and stick with it due to its style, tone and intelligence/quality level. So if we change engines not all our formal/informal and other styles will change?
6. Based on the point above, dropping down to Microsoft is not an option and it’s not right that after translating posts and listing most days for the last year and trusting the WOML product that the only real option is to now pay double for all translations.
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )Italian (Italiano )
Timezone: Europe/Rome (GMT+02:00)
about:
If I find an incorrect segment in Italian and then copy and paste the English version into DeepL online- it translates with correct punctuation. So are we sure it is just the DeepL engine?
This greatly depends on HOW you are pasting it. you'd need to paste the entire content, not just part of it for it to show it incorrectly BUT it will in some cases translate it correctly, that's the great pain of testing it.
We also tested this many times (over 10) and in 8 it retrieved the incorrect content, in 1 it retrieved a totally different output (it removed the character altogether) and in the rest it returned the correct output BUT with a different translation. We're 100% sure it's the engine because we actually got an answer from Deepl saying that was a feature, not a bug so it would not be "fixed". In many cases they are right, but in others some weird punctuation is applied.
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About how to look for the content. try looking not only for the character but also for what comes after the character or it will not work. there's no other way to fix this and yes, it's a pain to do this 🙁 we're trying to move away from this way of working explicitly because of this (which, by the way, it's something that only Deepl does).
I'd suggest that if you know of pages that have this issue, try to translate them with another engine (I highly suggest WPML AI). You will not pay double because in this case I have already removed your debt but also granted credits so you can translate the pages you see have issues without issues. Would you give it a try with maybe one or 2 pages and see if this could be a good solution for now?
Even if Deepl call it a "feature" - we all know it is not, it is not functioning correctly. It is producing incorrect punctuation symbols and adding spaces where not necessary.
I do not want to upgrade and increase our costs just because what we have been using for the last year or more now suddenly does not work.
But if we must, I first have a few questions to clear up, because if we do change engines I need to understand our position going forward (both financially and any style/translation implications).
So just to confirm as we also translate into other languages (fr, de, and es) are you aware if this issue (or similar) occurs with these? or is it just Italian with this "Special Feature"
Also as I mentioned previously - when changing engines, does it not risk changing the style, tone etc?
I assume what has been translated remains in translation memory (when changing engines)?
I just want to clear up your last comment (as we translate almost every day into 4 languages - it is already a reasonable cost for this site)
You mentioned you removed my debt, assuming it was for the month or some credits to offset the testing of a few pages - thank you.
From a cost perspective if we do swap to WPML AI will it be double the cost of Deepl going forward, correct? Or has there been a pricing change (possibly due to this Deepl component not working properly).
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )Italian (Italiano )
Timezone: Europe/Rome (GMT+02:00)
I totally agree with you and we haven't given up, we're trying to find a solution to this problem 🙂
From those languages we haven't spotted any problem with Spanish, but we have with french and German.
In the case if German, the special characters changes seem to be actually correct though, they just look or seem weird unless you know the actual German grammar rules for punctuation (we had both a German and an Austrian native to confirm this).
Italian didn't really had issues of this kind until very recently.
About WPML AI, it will indeed increase your costs although we're working to reduce our prices soon (but there's no clear ETA for it yet).
I didn't just reset your month's usage but also most of the past usage as well (you can find the credits under WPML > Translation Management> Tools) so if you spot issues you can either fix the problems manually or retranslate the pages.
A d yes, the current translation are in translation memory but you can overwrite them when you translate again if you see the translation isn't needed.
As per your tone and formality, the AI decides this based in the site's context but if you give me the following information I can make sure it follows the correct tone and everything else:
- The name of the site and other relevant names (La spezia, La Spezia Guide, something else?).
- What the site is about.
- Target audience.
- The preferred tone you want to use and any content priorities (informal, readable and concise, for example).
You'll be able to tweak this soon but for now I can add that for you on our end and the AI translation will take that and improve the translations 🙂
For now you don't have to pay a thing for it because I gave you enough credits to test it out so you can send over that information, translate a few pages as an example and let me know if you like it or if there are things you didn't like so we can try to tweak it even further.
I will be away for the rest of this week and will begin to test with old and new content early next week.
It appears that there are 956312 credits, thank you for that. I assume they will remain until they are all used and not expire?
Are you able to add more time to this ticket so it does not close while i am away?
I will get back to you with the info required for site context, tone etc before using WPML AI.
I do want to say that I am concerned about switching to WPML AI when we were perfectly happy with Deepl engine (including the associated costs etc). I don't want to be trapped using WPML AI if/when Deepl issue is fixed - at this point purely based on costs. The site currently does not break even so doubling translation costs in the future (when the translation credits run out) does not make sense. The Deepl engine and pricing played a big part in us originally choosing to go with WPML over other vendors
(i don't think WPML AI existed back then).
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )Italian (Italiano )
Timezone: Europe/Rome (GMT+02:00)
No problem. you'll have 14 days from this moment or from your last reply before the ticket is closed.
And I totally understand about switching engines. you don't really need to do that if you don't want. it all depends on your situation. if you see that these character changes are not a dealbreaker, then you might be better off with DeepL, if not, then you could test WPML AI and see if it's a match to your needs and if the cost is worth it to you. a good testing phase would probably help you understand all this.
Given our site does not make a profit, and it is already quite a task and expense to translate, I decided not to immediately test the upgraded engine. It will only double our costs.
Furthermore, we made the decision to adopt and use WPML based on its functionality, performance, reviews, and cost. And it has worked well until recently.
It is not right that all of a sudden, WPML's flagship engine DeepL (until WPML AI engine came out) is now outputting faulty language, and the only option is to upgrade.
Anyway, I guess this is not your issue, and we must decide whether to continue using WPML - or move forward with a single-language site.
It was mentioned that the problem lies with Deepl and that is it s special feature, but again, incorrect use of punctuation, symbols and spacing cannot be considered a feature, surely.
When I have been checking translations in Italian, the fault appears randomly, BUT regularly throughout a post.
However, at no point when adding the Original English sentence to Deepl (online) does it translate incorrectly or with this feature.
It only happens in the WPML environment.
I appreciate the credits and opportunity to test WPML AI engine but however I look at it, it is not feasible to use this product from a cost perspective alone (for us).
If you think this is something that will be fixed in the near future, we will continue using the DeepL engine and correcting the translations. But, it simply takes too much time to correct, and then the even bigger issue - this may/may not be happening to our other language posts also.
If it is never going to work correctly, can you let me know so we can make some critical decisions?
I have attached a doc from the last post I translated (with about 50-60% of the errors I picked up while translating), Deepl online gets it right every time.
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )Italian (Italiano )
Timezone: Europe/Rome (GMT+02:00)
Could you give me the page where you got the content from the screenshot?
Because even though DeepL does sometimes behave strangely with certain languages, this one seems too weird, and I’d like to send this specific case to our developers so they can talk to DeepL—since there’s no way this could be considered a “feature” (as they sometimes tell us).
As for what you see on their site… it’s a bit tricky because these issues happen when DeepL thinks it’s necessary, and even with the same text, the result isn’t always the same (which makes it even more annoying to approve, even for us when dealing with DeepL).
Thanks in advance for sharing the page (URL) that contains this content 🙂
The issue in the screenshot is exactly the problem that I first brought up back in May (and I believe I may have noticed it happening a week or two earlier).
To me, there is no way that is a "feature" as it does not exist in Italian grammar.
Please let me know what you find out and if this will be fixed somehow.
