Translations look really weird, and language switcher doesn't work

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Supporter timezone: Asia/Jerusalem (GMT+03:00)

Tagged: Compatibility

This topic contains 13 replies, has 0 voices.

Last updated by Itamar 1 day, 9 hours ago.

Assisted by: Itamar.

Author	Posts
September 30, 2025 at 9:05 am #17443268
carinS	Background of the issue: I am trying to address two possibly unrelated problems while building a site using the Newspaper theme, which is recommended by WPML (https://wpml.org/theme/newspaper/). We started with one of the theme's ready-made pages and began modifying it. Currently, we only have Wordfence, the TagDiv plugins required by the theme, and WPML multilingual + string translation installed. Symptoms: Firstly, the translatable strings appear as gibberish. On one page, all strings in both the source language (English) and the automatic translation to Swedish are just one hashtag. On another page, the source language looks like random characters, although the automatic translation to Swedish is sensible. Secondly, the language switcher, which should be a menu, doesn't open. Hovering over it does nothing, and clicking it just reloads the page in the same language (English). Even manually entering mysite.com/se removes the 'se' part and displays the page in English. Questions: What is causing the translatable strings to appear as gibberish or random characters? Why is the language switcher not functioning as expected?
September 30, 2025 at 9:26 am #17443406
Itamar WPML Supporter since 02/2016 Languages: English (English ) Timezone: Asia/Jerusalem (GMT+03:00)	Hi, This ticket has been inactive for some time. I didn't get a reply from you. I've converted this chat into a support ticket because you may still require our assistance. If you do, please reply to this ticket and share access to your site. Please explain to me where to see the problem with the translatable strings appearing as gibberish. If you need further help with this, please share the access details to your site with me. I'm enabling a private message for the following reply. Privacy and Security Policy We have strict policies regarding privacy and access to your information. Please see: https://wpml.org/purchase/support-policy/privacy-and-security-when-providing-debug-information-for-support/ IMPORTANT - - Please backup the site files and database before providing us access. -- -- If you have a staging site where the problem can be reproduced, it is better to share access to the staging site.-- Regards, Itamar.
October 1, 2025 at 4:18 pm #17449632
Itamar WPML Supporter since 02/2016 Languages: English (English ) Timezone: Asia/Jerusalem (GMT+03:00)	Hi, and thanks for the access details. I can see the problem on your site on the homepage and the Method page. When translating in the Advanced Translation Editor, they appear as you mentioned. Please see the attached screenshots. Please try the following. A. We've recently released new versions of WPML. Please update WPML and Strings Translation on your site. Please see the attached screenshot. Then, cancel the current pending translation jobs and resend them for translation, and check if the problem persists. B. If it persists, we might be facing a new problem with the Newspaper theme and the tagDiv plugins. I tried to replicate this problem on a fresh WordPress installation. However, we have old versions of the Newspaper theme, and I am unable to proceed. I wonder if you could please help us with this? We need to replicate this issue on a fresh WordPress installation. Then I'll be able to escalate it to our compatibility team. To achieve this, I created a test website with a clean WordPress installation. You can access it through this link: hidden link With this link, you'll be directly logged in. The installed Newspaper theme is not licensed. Could you activate your license on this test site and update the theme? Then, could you create a test page with a few similar elements to those on your site and see if the same problem persists on the test site? When everything is finished and you can replicate the problem, please let us know. Important! Do not import your site to the test site. We must replicate the problem on a fresh, clean WordPress installation. Thanks, Itamar.
October 2, 2025 at 10:11 am #17451563
carinS	Hello Itamar! I did that, I updated the WPML plugins, removed the translation jobs, and re-added those pages for translation. The same problem persists. I have also updated the Newspaper theme and the tagDiv plugins on your test site. I think though that you should contact the tagDiv team and ask to get a free license from them (and also give them a free WPML license). It's in both of your shared interest that you can debug using each others products. Anyway, it's done now, this time. Your test site has some warnings visible all the time. They were there already when I went there for the first time, before I did anything. I also can't get to the tagDiv composer for unknown reasons, so I can't create that kind of elements on a page. I assume my original problem is the combination of the tagDiv plugins and WPML, so trying to create any random content in the Gutenberg editor seems like a waste of time. That WordPress installation doesn't look like a new, clean one? There are a bunch of inactive plugins and stuff. I activated the WPML Multilingual cms, because then the site is closer to what we have on our page. Best regards, Elias
October 4, 2025 at 4:26 pm #17456101
Itamar WPML Supporter since 02/2016 Languages: English (English ) Timezone: Asia/Jerusalem (GMT+03:00)	Hi, Elias. Thanks for your effort on trying to replicate the issue on the sandbox site. You wrote: "I also can't get to the tagDiv composer for unknown reasons, so I can't create that kind of elements on a page." I can see that tagDiv Composer is installed on the test site. However, I'm unfamiliar with everything about the tagDiv Composer settings. Could you please explain where it is typically possible to create TagDiv Composer elements? If you can, please attach screenshots. Also, please check the following known issue. https://wpml.org/errata/newspaper-theme-multiple-widgets-cannot-be-translated/ Please check if applying the suggested workaround helps in your case. Thanks, Itamar.
October 6, 2025 at 9:30 am #17459072
carinS	Hi Itamar! There are apparently a few ways to enter tagDiv composer. Normally, when you're on a page and logged in, there's a button in the small extra header that lets you enter tagDiv Composer. That one was missing. But one other way is to click "Edit wit TagDiv Composer" on the pages-page (see attached picture). That one worked. I imported some random template from the TagDiv Cloud Library. But there's something properly broken on the test page, there's this warning message that's visible all the time, and I cannot save any changes (see the second attached picture). I tried to translate that example page, but only some of the strings were selected for translation. I applied the fix to the issue that you linked to both on our own page and on the test page, but it doesn't seem to change anything. The problems persist. I also want to say that this is becoming a serious problem for us, since we would want to let in customers to the Swedish version of the page (which we cannot create because this isn't working). Preferably already last Friday. The page itself is only half-finished, but because of some unexpected events, we suddenly have an urgent need of a working page with information. So, if it's in any way possible, some priority to this case would be really appreciated. Best regards, Elias
October 8, 2025 at 1:04 pm #17467336
Itamar WPML Supporter since 02/2016 Languages: English (English ) Timezone: Asia/Jerusalem (GMT+03:00)	Hi, Elias. Since we can't reproduce the exact issue on the sandbox site, please allow me to create a new test page similar to your homepage to see if the problem occurs again. Then, if needed, please allow me to take a copy of your site. For this, I need to install a plugin like Duplicator or All-in-One Migration. Please let me know if you agree. Regards, Itamar.
October 8, 2025 at 1:24 pm #17467370
carinS	Hi Itamar! Yes, of course you can take a copy. There's nothing secret on the page. Best regards, Elias
October 12, 2025 at 6:13 pm #17477689
Itamar WPML Supporter since 02/2016 Languages: English (English ) Timezone: Asia/Jerusalem (GMT+03:00)	Hi, Elias. I took a copy of your site and I wanted to esclate it to our second-tier supporters. However, when I just checked your site with the user you provided, I couldn't see this problem in WPML -> Translations. There are two jobs in the state of 'In Progress' and two complete jobs. Please see the attached screenshot. When I edit those jobs in the Advanced Translation Editor, I no longer see the problems that we could see before. The content is there for translation in a human-readable way. Please see the attached screenshot. Do you see that the problem persists, or is also solved for you? Regards, Itamar.
October 13, 2025 at 7:28 am #17478491
carinS	Hello Itamar! Crap. Yes, the problem still exists! We had to make our own temporary solution, with different pages in different languages, since this site is already live. The home-page (that only had hashtags before) seems to work for now. But the method-page is still just gibberish. Go to the WPML dashboard, and choose the page "Method-engelska" to translate. It's the same page as before, we just stuck the name of the language on it since we now have two different ones until we get WPML working. It's an English page, and we changed the site language to Swedish temporarily, so you need to change source language in the filter menu. Best regards Elias
October 14, 2025 at 1:59 pm #17484360
carinS	Hello! I got some support from tagDiv. They say I need to just copy the strings from original language over to the translated page, and then translate everything in the page builder. That is such an ugly hack, it kinda works (although it's buggy), but it completely breaks a normal translation workflow. They even have a guide: hidden link I won't close this ticket since this is clearly not a proper way to do things. One of you need to compensate for the other, this is not how translation is done. It also means that any changes to a page needs to be done manually on each language.
October 15, 2025 at 9:58 am #17486454
Itamar WPML Supporter since 02/2016 Languages: English (English ) Timezone: Asia/Jerusalem (GMT+03:00)	Hi, Thanks for adding information about this case and providing tagDiv's reply. I'm consulting our compatibility team about this issue. I'll keep you updated here. I appreciate your patience. Itamar.
October 16, 2025 at 11:08 am #17489909
Itamar WPML Supporter since 02/2016 Languages: English (English ) Timezone: Asia/Jerusalem (GMT+03:00)	Hi, I discussed this issue with our compatibility team and escalated it to them. They will check the compatibility with tagDiv. We'll keep you updated here on any news regarding this issue. Regards, Itamar.
October 18, 2025 at 12:19 pm #17495748
Itamar WPML Supporter since 02/2016 Languages: English (English ) Timezone: Asia/Jerusalem (GMT+03:00)	Hi, Our compatibility team has provided the following workaround. 1. Go to WPML > Settings > Custom XML Configuration in your WordPress dashboard. 2. Add the following XML configuration and save: <wpml-config> <shortcodes> <shortcode> <tag>tdm_block_column_title_simplified_2</tag> <attributes> <attribute encoding="base64">text</attribute> </attributes> </shortcode> <shortcode> <tag>tdm_block_inline_text_simplified_2</tag> <attributes> <attribute encoding="base64">text</attribute> </attributes> </shortcode> </shortcodes> </wpml-config> We've already added this code to your site. Note that the tagDiv Builder has probably more shortcodes. If needed, you can add them all to a single test page to create the full XML config. You can read about registering page builders' content for translation here: https://wpml.org/documentation/support/language-configuration-files/register-page-builder-content-for-translation/. Please let me know if you have any further questions. Regards, Itamar.