Background of the issue:
I am working on salasobrien.com, which uses ACF. To enable automatic translation, I have edited several field groups and set them to Expert in the Multilingual Setup. Under Translation preferences, I chose Translate.
Symptoms:
When pages containing these fields are edited, WordPress shows 'You need to translate this post manually because the field groups attached to it use different translation options' at the top of the screen, which confuses editors.
Questions:
Are we doing something wrong with the setup for automatic translation?
Why does WordPress show a message about manual translation?
I will need to closely examine your website. Therefore, I will require temporary access (WP-Admin and FTP) to a test site where the problem has been replicated, if possible. This will enable me to provide better assistance and determine if any configurations need to be modified.
Please note that it is important to have a backup for security purposes and to prevent any potential data loss. You can use the UpdraftPlus plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/updraftplus/) to fulfill your backup requirements.
Your upcoming reply will be treated with confidentiality and will only be visible to you and me.
✙ To resolve the issue, I may need your consent to deactivate and reactivate plugins and the theme, as well as make configuration changes on the site if necessary. This emphasizes the significance of having a backup.
Unfortunately, the dev site isn't similar enough to the live site to be useful at the moment (it's still configured for a translation service, not automatic translation). I'm also not able to grant access to the live site at the moment. So, I'll do my best to describe the problem, and I hope that gives you enough to work with.
This site uses ACF. To enable automatic translation of all content, I have edited several field groups and set them to Expert in the Multilingual Setup. Then, under Translation preferences, I chose Translate. Then automatic translation worked, and the right language showed on the front end. However, it caused "You need to translate this post manually because the field groups attached to it use different translation options" to appear at the top of the screen when editing pages, which confuses editors.
To get rid of the message, I again edited the field groups and used Multilingual Setup to choose "Same fields across languages." However, that prevents the translated text from appearing on the front end; the same text shows regardless of language. For example, English text shows for those fields whether I set the page to English or French.
An example of the problem is at the bottom of hidden link, where it says "Contact us" and "Download now." These are ACF fields. With the field group set to "Same fields across languages," I can't see those fields in the Advanced Translation Editor. With the field group set to use Expert mode and Translation preferences set to Translate, the French text appears when the page is displayed in French, but then "You need to translate this post manually because the field groups attached to it use different translation options" appears at the top of the screen when editing pages that contain the field group.
Is there a way to have automatic translation work for ACF fields and also not have "You need to translate this post manually because the field groups attached to it use different translation options" appear at the top of the screen when editing pages?
I get what you mean but unfortunately, automatic translation will only work when you use the "Same fields across languages" translation option. Also, if a "Lock" icon is showing on the secondary language custom fields, it means the content will be copied from the primary language. Which is why it is not showing in the Advanced Translation Editor for translation.
Thanks. I understand that automatic translation won't work for these ACF fields unless they're set to "Same fields across languages."
When I edit the page in the primary language, there is a lock on the secondary language custom fields ("Link" field).
When I try to manually change these fields and save the page, the fields don't change on the front end. When I edit the page again, the fields are back to the primary language. I guess that's because of the lock.
How can I translate these fields, ideally automatically, or at least manually?
Apologies, but I'm not entirely sure I understand. If the field is locked in the secondary language, I don't believe it can be edited. Locked fields are set as "copied," so you'll need to adjust the ACF group to "Export Mode" and change the translation option to "translate" if you want to translate it. This is the only method available.
I had set the ACF field group to Expert mode. That allowed the correct language to show on the front end. However, it caused "You need to translate this post manually because the field groups attached to it use different translation options" to appear at the top of the screen when editing pages, which confuses editors.
Should I just tell editors that message is expected, or is there any way to have the ACF group set to Expert mode and also prevent that message from appearing when a page containing the ACF field group is edited?
Do you have multiple ACF groups on the page? That message appears when different translation settings are configured for the groups. Try setting all the ACF groups to "Expert Mode," and the message should no longer appear.
Sorry for the delay. I've not been getting emails when you reply, even though I have "Send me an email when I receive a reply to a support question" enabled in my account settings. The emails aren't in my spam, trash, or anywhere else.
Anyway, yes, there are multiple ACF field groups on each page. We want to use automatic translation (translate everything automatically) as much as possible, so won't setting all ACF field groups to Expert mode prevent this automatic translation? I thought automatic translation would only work for ACF fields if they're set to "Same fields across languages"?
I apologize for the missing email notification. At the top of this ticket, you should see an option labeled "Email notifications about ALL answers." You might want to adjust this setting.
I also apologize for the confusion regarding the ACF translation options. What I meant is that you cannot remove the notification "You need to translate this post manually because the field groups attached to it use different translation options" if your ACF groups on the page have mixed or different translation options.
If a page uses multiple ACF groups, all with the same translation option ("Same fields across languages"), this notification "You need to translate this post manually because the field groups attached to it use different translation options" will not appear. I hope this clarifies things.
If you just want to remove the notification on the top of the page, maybe you can consider hiding it using Custom CSS.
Thanks. This thread was set to "No email notifications" for some reason. I wouldn't have set it that way. I just changed it, so I hope I get email notifications from now on.
I checked, and all the ACF field groups were set to "Same fields across languages" except for 2, which were set to "Expert." Oddly, when I changed one of the field groups, the "You need to translate this post manually because the field groups attached to it use different translation options" message disappeared, even though the other field group was still set to "Expert." That doesn't make sense to me.
What I ended up doing is temporarily setting the field group that I needed to translate to "Expert," making the needed translation, then setting the field group back to "Same fields across languages" so that the "You need to translate this post manually because the field groups attached to it use different translation options" message disappeared. The correct translation still appears on the front end. This was a very clunky way of dealing with the problem, but it appears to have worked.
