Background of the issue:
Hi, my instance of WPML on hidden link started auto-translating content in all of my deactivated languages on 13th June. These languages had been deactivated for more than a year and I never enabled them again or asked WPML to translate any remaining content in these languages. Our WPML instance is set to auto-translate content, but of course only for languages that are activated.
Symptoms:
WPML auto-translated content in deactivated languages, consuming a lot of translation credits this month.
Questions:
Why did WPML start auto-translating deactivated languages?
Can I get a refund for the translation credits consumed by these unintended translations?
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )Italian (Italiano )
Timezone: Europe/Rome (GMT+02:00)
Just so you know, i'm checking your site out and i've been following your situation from before it was a ticket. i'll come to you shortly with my findings.
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )Italian (Italiano )
Timezone: Europe/Rome (GMT+02:00)
Hello,
My investigation is here: hidden link
From what i see the languages were not disabled but hidden when the credits were used which is expected (hidden means something like "this language is not ready yet, so i don't want it to be public" so it's hidden from the front-end, but it can and will be translated normally).
I can state this because of the status of some jobs in many of the dates where i see that translations occurred for these languages (some of them were early June and early to mid february, very briefly and not for ALL the languages so some were indeed disabled back then).
You mentioned that you had them disabled for years, so could it be that some were enabled either by mistake or to check something? (even a quick enable / disable action would trigger the automatic translation).
Let me know please so i can try to understand better what happened.
Sorry I didn't get any email notification that you had responded so didn't see your response until now.
The same issue just happened again and WPML suddenly enabled all my deactivated languages again and started automatically translating remaining content for those languages. I have attached two screenshots of this and paused automatic translations again now. One of the screenshots clearly shows that all languages are listed as enabled now but some of them are simultaneously listed as disabled! That's something that shouldn't be possible and of course none of the deactivated languages should be activated in the first place.
Regarding your investigation, I've attached a screenshot from your Loom video that shows all languages that should be active. What WPML is showing in your recording is the correct list of enabled and disabled languages. The languages that are shown as deactivated were deactivated over a year ago and never enabled again. I understand the difference between hidden and disabled languages. None of the disabled languages were ever made public, they were always hidden and then about a year ago fully disabled. After that we never touched them again. I tried to remove the content in those disabled languages too, using the buttons in the table on the "Languages" page, but every time I cleared the content, at some point WPML starts showing the content of the disabled languages again on the "Languages" page.
The reason the translations weren't done for all pages and all disabled languages is because I noticed the issue and paused automatic translations before WPML was able to auto-translate it all.
We need to find a fix for this please. I can also provide a list of translations from our translation usage report that should have never been done automatically because the languages should have stayed deactivated.
It seems to have gone back to normal now and the deactivated languages are no longer in the list of enabled languages. WPML is only showing 2 translations left in the queue, but I will keep automatic translations disabled for now until we fix this error.
Here is a list of translation pairs that should always stay disabled and never translate. I'm even happy for those to be completely removed from the site but WPML doesn't seem to allow us to do that.
Hi, I will test option 1). Regarding question 2) yes it seems to happen when I modify pages or send a page for translation. It randomly enables deactived languages and then after 15-30 minutes they are disabled again.
Hi, I just opened the 'edit languages' menu and noticed that several of our disabled languages appear twice in the selection. Maybe this is why some of them become active while the other version potentially stays deactivated?
Only the black underlined languages of Norwegian, Finnish, Bulgarian and Russian exist as a single language, as per the attached screenshot.
All circled deactivated languages in red exist twice.
Languages: English (English )Spanish (Español )Italian (Italiano )
Timezone: Europe/Rome (GMT+02:00)
You're right and i was looking into it because they seem to be languages that were modified and that might be why they are like that.
I was wondering if you could create a staging site out of this one so we can ask our devs to test without risks on your own and I'm currently waiting to see how many credits were used so we can give them back to you.
you can create a staging site with a plugin called WP Staging, it's quite straightforward and might do the trick. just let me know the URL of the new site since i suppsoe the credentials will be the same.
By the way, you may need to change your settings at the top of the thread: hidden link so you can get a mail from every reply i make.
Hi, please bear with us while we create the staging site. Please don't close the support topic yet. In the meantime, we received an invoice and were charged for the translation credits that were used on the deactivated languages.
