why my sub categories (taxanomy) become main categories in translation?

This is the technical support forum for WPML - the multilingual WordPress plugin.

Everyone can read, but only WPML clients can post here. WPML team is replying on the forum 6 days per week, 22 hours per day.

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
-	7:00 – 12:00	7:00 – 12:00	7:00 – 12:00	7:00 – 12:00	7:00 – 12:00	-
-	13:00 – 15:00	13:00 – 15:00	13:00 – 15:00	13:00 – 15:00	13:00 – 15:00	-

Supporter timezone: Europe/Madrid (GMT+02:00)

This topic contains 2 replies, has 1 voice.

Assisted by: Carlos Rojas.

Author	Posts
August 31, 2025 at 1:25 pm #17360476
heshamA-5	Background of the issue: My website is an LMS system with a 3-level category system: main category university, subcategory college, and subcategory department under the college. I am trying to translate these categories from English to Arabic using WPML. Symptoms: When I translate some categories through WPML course translation, the translated categories become main categories and cannot connect with parent categories. Questions: How can I fix the issue of translated subcategories becoming main categories? What steps should I follow to ensure categories remain connected to their parent categories after translation?
August 31, 2025 at 1:29 pm #17360477
heshamA-5	any response please
September 1, 2025 at 10:14 am #17362017
Carlos Rojas WPML Supporter since 03/2017 Languages: English (English ) Spanish (Español ) Timezone: Europe/Madrid (GMT+02:00)	Hello, Thank you for contacting us To avoid having this issue, you must translate the parent taxonomy first and then the child taxonomies. I recommend you follow the steps described in this guide to sync the taxonomies hierarchy: https://wpml.org/documentation/getting-started-guide/translating-post-categories-and-custom-taxonomies/#sync-taxonomy-structure Regards, Carlos