How to Translate WordPress Taxonomies – Categories, Tags, Custom Taxonomies, and Term Meta

You Usually Don’t Translate Taxonomies Separately

When you send a post for translation, the terms attached to it travel with the post. Categories and tags get translated alongside the content they describe. For most sites, that’s it. There’s no taxonomy step.

When to Translate Taxonomies First: Heavy-Taxonomy Sites

Some sites are structured around their taxonomies: an e-commerce shop with deep product categories, a directory site, anything where the taxonomy itself is the navigation. Translating posts in that situation translates terms one by one as each post goes through, which can lead to inconsistent translations across the same term.

For those sites, the Translation Dashboard has a Taxonomies section. Open WPML > Translations, find the Taxonomies section, bulk-select the taxonomy types you want translated first (Categories, Tags, Brands, etc.), and send them. WPML translates every term in the selected taxonomies in one job. Three things matter here:

• Hierarchy is preserved. “Cars” under “Movies” gets translated separately from “Cars” under “Toys”. The AI knows the context.
• Term meta travels with the term. Custom fields and metadata on each term get translated too. If you use Yoast SEO or Rank Math, the SEO term meta those plugins add is handled separately – see How to translate your site for multilingual SEO.
• Switching a taxonomy from non-translatable to translatable while Translate Everything Automatically is on queues every existing term automatically. No further prompt.

Translate the taxonomy first, then translate the posts, and the product/post pages assemble with consistent terms throughout.

Fine-Grained Control: The Taxonomy Tab

When you want to translate a single term by hand (or override an automatic translation), open the Taxonomy tab in WPML > Translations.

Pick a taxonomy from the dropdown at the top (Categories, Tags, or any custom taxonomy). The page lists every term in that taxonomy with one column per language. The + icon translates a term manually; the pencil edits an existing translation. Below the term table, a separate row lets you translate the taxonomy’s own labels and URL slug. The word Tag (and the /tag/ slug) becomes /etiquette/ in French, Mots-clés in the language switcher.

When a term has drifted from its source-language counterpart (the source was renamed, or the translations were edited independently), open the term’s edit screen in WordPress and use the Languages box to reconnect it to the source.

What Makes a Taxonomy Translatable

If a taxonomy isn’t set translatable, it won’t show up in the Translation Dashboard’s Taxonomies section or in the dedicated Taxonomy tab, and its terms won’t translate when their posts are sent.

Open WPML > Settings > Taxonomy Translation. Each taxonomy has three options:

• Translatable – only show translated items. Terms exist independently per language; a term shown to a French visitor is the French translation.
• Translatable – use translation if available or fallback to default language. If a translation is missing, the source-language term shows.
• Not translatable. WPML ignores this taxonomy.

Categories and Tags come pre-set as translatable. Custom taxonomies registered by themes and plugins (product categories, brands, etc.) often default to Not translatable. Flip the setting and the taxonomy starts appearing in Translations.