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[Waiting for user confirmation] Automatic translation for media (caption, alt text, description)
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Background of the issue:
I am trying to automatically translate the media. Link to a page where the issue can be seen: hidden link
Symptoms:
It does fill the translations but the content itself is not properly translated. Most media just copying the same content over to different languages.
Questions:
Why is the media content not properly translated?
How can I ensure the media translations are correct?
For images not translating automatically, especially featured images, please try the following steps:
IMPORTANT: Please take full backup of your website and database beforehand.
1. Ensure 'Translate media library texts with posts' is activated in WPML -> Settings -> WPML Media.
2. Use WPML -> Translation Management to filter by the content (i.e. pages, posts or products where these images are used) and select the content to translate. I'll recommend selecting small batches of content (i.e. 10 or 20 for testing). Once a batch is successful you can select more for a batch (i.e. 50 or 100). Sending all at once may cause a 504 error due to any resource limit on the server.
3. Translate automatically and send to translation, ensuring to overwrite existing translations if necessary.
This process should help in translating the media metadata automatically.
Additionally, for images added directly in the WP Editor, their details should pull into the Advanced Translation Editor and get translated automatically. However, featured images require manual adjustment in WPML -> Media Translation to reflect the correct translations.
There is only one problem.. The advanced translation editor breaks stuff on the site.
It messes with some content stuff and some page builder blocks content gets translated badly. so i did a lot of manual work besides the automatic translations. Is there now way to automatically fix the media without really touching the pages again? since touching the pages will cause me to do a lot of manual work again to fix those pages.
Unfortunately sending only media for auto-translation isn't possible.
However, when you send the content, which contains this media, it is (media captions, alt text and description) translated along side the content. But to make this work, there's an option in WPML -> Settings -> WPML Media -> 'Translate media library texts with posts', which is usually not active by default. However, you can turn it on before sending content for translation.
In current situation, where you 've made manual changes to the content:
A) if these changes were made in ATE (Advanced Translation Editor) after the content had been translated automatically, then your changes 'll not be lost due to the Translation Memory.
B) However, if you made the changes by editing the content within WordPress editor (i.e. switching to other language in WP admin and making direct changes), you'll lose these changes if you resend the content for auto-translation.
I'll recommend taking a full backup of the site, then check with only one or 2 pages, ONLY if changes were made as mentioned in #A. Otherwise, you'll have to translate the media captions, alt text and descriptions manually.