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[Escalated to Compatibility team] WPML menu shows entries in other language
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Background of the issue:
The site hidden link uses WPML for multilingual support with three languages: German (default), English, and Chinese. Only German and English are fully translated, while Chinese has only one translated page with contact data. The German and English versions have three menus each: primary (main), secondary (language switcher), and footer. The Chinese version has only the secondary menu for the language switcher.
Symptoms:
The Chinese page shows part of the German main menu and does not display the English footer menu correctly. The client managed to show the English footer menu by duplicating all English pages and assigning them to Chinese, then creating a new menu.
Questions:
How can I prevent the Chinese page from showing parts of the German main menu?
Is there an easier way to display the English footer menu on the Chinese page without duplicating all English pages?
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )German (Deutsch )
Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)
Hello,
It looks as if those menus have not been translated yet.
If all your pages have already been translated and published you can use the option WPML > WP Menus Sync which will automatically create the menus in all languages.
Further, if you are using the Divi Theme Builder to create Header, Footer, and Body Templates you will need to translate them with WPML's Translation Management.
I read (again) the starter guide for translating menus, but I still don't understand what you mean. The language switch between german and english works perfect for all menus because there a pages for german *and* english. But there are *no* pages except of one contact page for chinese.
So I can not provide a chinese translation and there should be no main menu! For the footer menu, the english footer menu should be used.
I tried to add a chinese main menu using the plus button as described in above documentation. This main menu has no items. But again the chinese page shows entries - others than before - in the main menu - see hidden link.
I could solve the problem concerning the chinese footer menu. As I can't select the english pages to add to the menu under Appearance - Menus I created a menu using custom links to the english pages. Not ideal, but it works without duplicating all english pages.
Still open is the problem how to get rid of any entries in the chinese main menu. There are no items in the menu, but nevertheless two links are shown on the page. They show different chinese signs but link to the same page.
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )German (Deutsch )
Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)
Hello,
Indeed, creating custom menu items is the only solution in this case, as menus in a second language can only link to pages that were created in the active language.
I would suggest you do the same for the Chinese Main Menu.
Please take kindly note that my working days are from Tuesday to Saturday.
Thank you and sorry for my late answer - I'm only partly in the office this week. In fact I still need help. In the meantime I'm having even more problems with the chinese version than before.
I tried many versions for the main menu, but regardless if it does not exist at all or it is emtpy, I always get entries in that menu. Where do these entries come from (perhaps there is a database entry which I could delete?)? And how can I define a menu without entries for a specific language? Is there any possibility with WPML? I would also be glad, if you could provide me with a corrsponding function which I can put in my child theme's functions.php.
I also though about removing Chinese completely from the language switcher and add the only one chinese page to the top menus of EN and DE. But then, the footer menu in chinese would be missing.
I could also provide you with admin access if you send me the corresponding reply form, but I'm not back before monday. If you like, you can also close the ticket and I will reopen it next week.
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )German (Deutsch )
Timezone: America/Lima (GMT-05:00)
Hello Gaby.
I would like to offer to have a closer look at the problem and request temporary access (wp-admin and FTP) to the website to investigate this issue further.
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I added a chinese translation of the main menu with no menu items, but despite of that it shows me a chinese menu item which links to the german(!) homepage together with the search icon. But I don't want either of them, I do not want a menu at all.
I removed the custom link with the chinese flag from both, the german and the enlish top menu. But then there is no chinese flag at all and I can't select the chinese language.
Actually I don't know why this flag was set as a custom link to the top menus, because I took this site over from another agency 2 years ago, who created the menus. Now I had to change part of the menus and ran into these problems ...
