Customize the Languages on Your WPML Site – Add, Remove, Hide, Edit

Open it at WPML > Settings > Languages.

Add a Language

In the Site Languages card, click Add / Remove languages. Pick from WPML’s bundled set. Over 60 languages with locale codes, native names, and flag assets included. Save, and the language is live: it shows up in the language switcher, in the Translations Dashboard’s list of target languages, and in the Setup Wizard’s language selector if you ever re-run it.

Remove a Language

Untick the language and save. Visitors stop seeing the language immediately (no half-translated content remains visible), but WPML keeps the translations themselves in the database. If you re-enable the language later, the existing translations come back. This trips up clients who think removing a language deletes its content.

To purge a language’s translations permanently, follow the “completely remove a language” procedure below. That’s the only way to free up the database rows for good.

Change the Default Language

The default language is the one your site was originally written in. WPML treats it as the source for every translation.

Changing the default after the site is established is possible but involved. WPML will reinterpret every post as a translation from the new default, which means content you wrote in the original default language now reads as a translation. The procedure exists at Change default language on the Site Languages card; before you run it, make sure you understand the implications for your existing content. Ask a support question if the site has substantial content already.

Add a Custom Language

WPML’s bundled language list covers the common cases. If you need a regional variant (Swiss German, Latin American Spanish), a constructed language, or any locale not in the list, use Edit Languages to define one. You supply:

• The locale code (e.g., de-CH, pt-AO).
• The English name and native name.
• A flag (upload your own image or pick a default).
• The default text direction (left-to-right or right-to-left).

The new language joins your Add / Remove list and can be enabled like any other.

Whether automatic translation supports a custom language depends on the AI engine you’re using. See PTC – WPML’s AI translation for the engine’s language coverage.

Hide a Language While Translations Are in Progress

When you’re rolling out a new language and don’t want visitors to see half-finished content, use the Hide languages card. Tick the languages you want hidden, save, and they disappear from visitor-facing pages and search-engine crawlers. But they stay visible to logged-in editors, so your team can keep translating.

When the translations are ready, untick the language and the new content goes live in one step.

Completely Remove a Language

When you’ve decided a language is gone for good and you want WPML to release the translation rows from the database:

1. From WPML > Settings > Languages, remove the language from the active list and save.
2. Delete every translated post, page, and taxonomy term in that language. (The standard untick-and-save in step 1 hides the language but keeps the translation rows so re-enabling restores them; the deletion is what actually purges.)
3. Reset the language data via WPML > Support > Fix language data if any orphan rows remain.

A Note on Right-To-Left Languages

WPML respects each language’s default text direction. Add Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, or any RTL language and pages translated into them render in the right direction automatically. Your theme also needs to handle direction properly – most modern themes do.

If you mix LTR and RTL languages on the same site, the direction switches at the language switcher; visitors don’t see jumbled layouts.

Changing the Language Code of Existing Content

Changing a language’s code (e.g., en to en-US) on a site that already has translations is a multi-step migration. The procedure is documented in Troubleshooting WPML – start there before making changes.