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We currently have an English site and 9 seperate non-English sites. The non-English sites are much smaller than the English site, ie a subset of the content.
Our vision longer-term is to connect these sites such that new/edited content on the English site would be translated and used on the non-English sites. But we don’t need to expand these non-English sites to be as big as the English site, ie have all the content from the English site.
We would like to select the subset of English language content that matches what is currently on the non-English sites and have that translated and now “connected” to the English content site, meaning the non-English content would now get the updates to the English content.
But we have a few questions:
1 – because we plan to only translate a subset of the English content, to keep the non-English sites smaller, does the WPML tool allow us to localize the non-English content, e.g. to remove/change links to content outside the subset of content?
2 – and can we keep translating only the changes that affect the subset of the English content, ie not add all new content edits or additions to the non-English sites?
2 – because we have this content already translated, can WPML leverage our existing translation memory to reduce the need to translate everything?
Hello Erik,
thank you for your interest in WPML.
WPML allows you to keep a diffrent set of pages for your original language and for the other languages, no problem here. We provide full flexibility here, which means the following setup is possible:
English (original/primary language): page A, page B, page C
Spanish: page-A, page C
French: page-B, page C
Italian: page-C, page-D (note that page-D doesn’t exist in English, which is also possible with WPML)
If you want to use existing translations for some of your pages, you would need to create these pages in your site in the target language and then manually connect with their equivalents in other languages. Please note that for these pages you cannot use our Advanced Translation Editor and you cannot use automatic translations for these pages. You would need to disable the Advanced Translation Editor on these pages and use the WordPress editor instead. You can use Advanced Translation Editor and automatic translations only for new pages and pages that haven’t been translated yet. This page would help: https://wpml.org/faq/how-to-link-already-translated-pages/ and also this one: https://wpml.org/documentation/translating-your-contents/using-different-translation-editors-for-different-pages/#how-to-use-manual-translation
The reason is that our translation memory won’t handle the translation mapping for translations that are not coming from WPML.
Here’s the recommended setup for your site:
1. Add all of the languages or only some (you can add more language later)
2. When installing WPML please select “Let me choose what to translate” in the WPML wizard (don’t select “Translate Everything Automatically)
3. Go to WPML > Translation Management and translate a few page automatically to see how it goes.
4. Create or import the pages with your existing translations and connect them to their original equivalents https://wpml.org/faq/how-to-link-already-translated-pages/
I hope this helps.
We don’t provide tools for importing something into the translation memory.
If you want to import existing WordPress posts or pages in one go (and set up a specific language for all of them when importing), you can use the WP All Import plugin with the WPML All Import plugin as explained here. Another option is to use XLIFF files
Of course you can always important your regular posts into your site without setting up the language, as you would do without WPML. Such posts will be assigned to the primary language of your site.
To sum up:
– if you want to use automatic translation and/or edit your translation via the Advanced Translation Editor of WPML – these will work only for new posts/pages and pages that haven’t been translated outside the WPML Advanced Translation Editor
– posts with existing translations will be recognized and managed by WPML but you would need to edit those using the WordPress editor. For those you would need to manually set up the language or assign the language during the import process
We currently have an English site and 9 seperate non-English sites. The non-English sites are much smaller than the English site, ie a subset of the content.
Our vision longer-term is to connect these sites such that new/edited content on the English site would be translated and used on the non-English sites. But we don’t need to expand these non-English sites to be as big as the English site, ie have all the content from the English site.
We would like to select the subset of English language content that matches what is currently on the non-English sites and have that translated and now “connected” to the English content site, meaning the non-English content would now get the updates to the English content.
But we have a few questions:
1 – because we plan to only translate a subset of the English content, to keep the non-English sites smaller, does the WPML tool allow us to localize the non-English content, e.g. to remove/change links to content outside the subset of content?
2 – and can we keep translating only the changes that affect the subset of the English content, ie not add all new content edits or additions to the non-English sites?
2 – because we have this content already translated, can WPML leverage our existing translation memory to reduce the need to translate everything?
Hello Erik,
thank you for your interest in WPML.
WPML allows you to keep a diffrent set of pages for your original language and for the other languages, no problem here. We provide full flexibility here, which means the following setup is possible:
English (original/primary language): page A, page B, page C
Spanish: page-A, page C
French: page-B, page C
Italian: page-C, page-D (note that page-D doesn’t exist in English, which is also possible with WPML)
If you want to use existing translations for some of your pages, you would need to create these pages in your site in the target language and then manually connect with their equivalents in other languages. Please note that for these pages you cannot use our Advanced Translation Editor and you cannot use automatic translations for these pages. You would need to disable the Advanced Translation Editor on these pages and use the WordPress editor instead. You can use Advanced Translation Editor and automatic translations only for new pages and pages that haven’t been translated yet. This page would help: https://wpml.org/faq/how-to-link-already-translated-pages/ and also this one: https://wpml.org/documentation/translating-your-contents/using-different-translation-editors-for-different-pages/#how-to-use-manual-translation
The reason is that our translation memory won’t handle the translation mapping for translations that are not coming from WPML.
Here’s the recommended setup for your site:
1. Add all of the languages or only some (you can add more language later)
2. When installing WPML please select “Let me choose what to translate” in the WPML wizard (don’t select “Translate Everything Automatically)
3. Go to WPML > Translation Management and translate a few page automatically to see how it goes.
4. Create or import the pages with your existing translations and connect them to their original equivalents https://wpml.org/faq/how-to-link-already-translated-pages/
I hope this helps.
Thanks Agnes, very helpful
Is it possible to upload an existing TMX, translation memory file to start translation?
Hello,
I’m not sure what TMX is.
We don’t provide tools for importing something into the translation memory.
If you want to import existing WordPress posts or pages in one go (and set up a specific language for all of them when importing), you can use the WP All Import plugin with the WPML All Import plugin as explained here. Another option is to use XLIFF files
Of course you can always important your regular posts into your site without setting up the language, as you would do without WPML. Such posts will be assigned to the primary language of your site.
To sum up:
– if you want to use automatic translation and/or edit your translation via the Advanced Translation Editor of WPML – these will work only for new posts/pages and pages that haven’t been translated outside the WPML Advanced Translation Editor
– posts with existing translations will be recognized and managed by WPML but you would need to edit those using the WordPress editor. For those you would need to manually set up the language or assign the language during the import process
Great, thank you very much