Background of the issue:
I am trying to display a taxonomy archive page in a secondary language. The issue can be seen on this page: hidden link. I expected the title and the link to edit the taxonomy term to be in the current language.
Symptoms:
The title and the link to edit the taxonomy term are in the original language instead of the current language. This might be related to the fact that the two terms have the same slug due to an import.
Questions:
How can the title issue be resolved when terms have the same slug across languages?
I suggest you try this to help us identify if it might be a conflict with another plugin or theme that is causing the problem.
**IMPORTANT:** Please try this in a staging environment or at least with a backup of your site files and database before continuing.
Disable all plugins except WPML-related and temporarily change the theme to a default WordPress such as Twenty Twenty-five.
Is the issue resolved with these settings? If so, please reactivate one by one to see which conflicts.
If the issue persists, I would like to request temporary access (wp-admin and FTP) to your site to take a better look at the issue.
It would be better to a testing site where the issue is replicated.
The information you will enter is private, which means only you and I can see and have access to it.
Maybe I'll need to replicate your site locally. For this, I'll need to temporarily install a plugin called “Duplicator” or "All in One WP Migration" on your site.
This will allow me to create a copy of your site and your content.
Once the problem is resolved, I will delete the local site.
**IMPORTANT**
- Please make a backup of site files and database before providing us access.
- If you do not see the wp-admin/FTP fields, this means your post & website login details will be made PUBLIC. DO NOT post your website details unless you see the required wp-admin/FTP fields.
Please note that we currently are not able to provide support for custom work within this forum.
I will, however, try to point you to the correct direction.
WPML collects the list of custom taxonomies very early—during the init hook at priority 5—to prefill its translation settings. The cemmis-specific-plugin registers its taxonomies later on the same hook but with the default priority (10). Because the taxonomies become available only after WPML has already scanned for them, WPML never knows they exist: they don’t appear in WPML → Taxonomy Translation, and WPML can’t sync translations or link terms, which leads to the ‘Tag not updated’ errors. Registering the taxonomies earlier (e.g., priority 0) or at least before WPML runs its setup ensures WPML can detect and manage them.
Also, it seems that the publication tag and the post tag share the same slug. Am I right?
I found the following workaround:
- Go to WPML > Taxonomy translation select Tags (there is no publications tags because of the issue I mentioned before) and translate Σουδάν to Soudan
- This will break your custom code because the slugs won't match
- To work around this, go to Posts > Tags switch to English using the language switcher in the admin bar and search for Soudan
- Use the quick edit link to set the same slug
I tried this in your site, and it's working, but I think that this needs to be fixed in the plugin code, something seems to be off there.
Thank you very much for the prompt reply and help.
We went ahead and deactivated the custom plugin but the issue persists: hidden link
As you will notice the link to edit the tag is still also wrong (it leads to the Edit page of the Greek taxonomy term).
Publication tags are not a new taxonomy - they are the default WP taxonomy for tags (post_tag). We have simply made the taxonomy available to Publications, too.
As the custom plugin deactivation doesn't seem to resolve the issue, do you happen to know what might be causing it?
I went to WPML > Taxonomy Translation and searched for Συρία, translated to Syria. After doing this, the title of the tag in English displays correctly.
Thank you for your reply.
On the backend the title was already in English (Syria). The issue was (and, as far as we can tell, still is) on the frontend.
Here: hidden link
the title in the frontend is still in Greek, while in the backend it is (and already was) in English: hidden link
I think I missed an important point you mentioned at the beginning. Please apologize.
You already have both terms, but they are not connected as a translation. And when you try to connect them, you get an error.
And you were right: this is due to the fact that they have the same slug.
So, for example if you go to Posts > Tags and edit the slug of the term Sudan to sudan-en. And then you connect it to Σουδάν, it works (you are able to connect it) and it's displayed correctly on the front end.
Can you give it a try? Is this a suitable workaround?
If not, I think the root of the problem is the import. Slugs should be unique so we need to make sure that they are, and also that the terms are properly connected to its translations/originals during the import. Can you please elaborate on the import process?
We knew from the beginning that changing the slug would resolve the issue. The thing is that there are many terms with this issue and we would have to check 100 or so terms and then change the ones with the same slug. We do not want to do that.
Our initial request is this:
How can the title issue be resolved when terms have the same slug across languages?
By the way, we changed the slug from "syria" to "syria-eng" using Quick Edit and now are unable to change it back - we get an error: The slug “syria” is already in use by another term.
Also, we are not primarily interested in connecting the terms. What we are interested in is simply being able to have the same slugs across languages.
The import was done using WP All Import Pro. We have used it it the past without issues.
The workaround is no longer needed. And WPML supports the same slug in different language.
I just double-check it and following the standard translation flow it worked: hidden link hidden link
I created the term, and translated it in WPML > Taxonomy translation. And I was able to set the same slug for the translated term.
You can access the test site by following this link: hidden link
So, I think that the problem originated in with the import. WordPress does not allow the same slug, WPML eludes this limitation and may be the import scenario was not taken into account.
Can you please import your terms into the test site?
As it was working for me locally, I needed to create a test term in your site. And it worked form: hidden link hidden link
How are you creating and translating the terms?
This is what I did:
- I went to Posts > Tags in the default language (Greek)
- I created the term
- Then I went to WPML > Taxonomy Translation
- Translated the term keeping the same slug
- It shows translated in the front end while using the same slug
But this is not working for your test term, so I am wondering if you did something differently.
Thanks.
We don't have access to the links you mentioned. In any case, these are the steps we follow to create the terms (we are not interested in linking them):
Greek: Posts->Tags->Add Tag
English: Posts->Tags->Add Tag
Both tags share the same slug but different titles.
Have you tried following the steps mentioned on the previous message?
It is not the fault of the custom plugin; we have just deactivated it again and the issue persists (unfortunately we cannot keep it constantly deactivated as we are performing taks on the website the require it).
As mentioned, WordPress does not allow terms with the same slug and WPML by passes this to allow same slug in different language. But it looks like this was implemented only for the standard translation flow.
For your use case, once created terms can't be connected (not a problem for your use case) and the title is wrong.
I escalated the issue to our second tier support. I'll get back to you as soon as I have a reply from them.
