WPML

Translating Content

How to translate content with WPML: guides for posts, pages, custom fields, forms, WooCommerce, multilingual SEO, and more. Find the page that matches what you’re translating.

The Easiest Way to Translate Your Site

The easiest way to translate your site is to enable WPML’s Translate Everything Automatically with PTC, WPML’s AI translation engine and the default. With Translate Everything Automatically on, PTC translates every part of your site in the background: posts and pages, custom post types, taxonomies, strings from your theme and plugins, WooCommerce products, even SEO meta. The only thing you still handle manually is translating your menus.

If you’re not using Translate Everything Automatically (because you translate by hand, use external services, or run a Translate Some workflow), read on. Each section below explains how to translate a specific kind of content, by any method.

  • Translate Everything Automatically – the default. Turn it on once and PTC keeps the site translated as you publish.
  • Translation Dashboard – the central hub at WPML > Translations > Dashboard. Where most translation operations start, including manual sends.
  • Who can translate your site – the four channels you can mix: yourself, WPML’s AI translation (PTC), your own translators, and professional translation services.

Translating Core WordPress Content

These pages cover the basic content types every WordPress site has:

Translating posts, pages and custom post types – the most common case. How WPML decides which post types are translatable, what Translate Everything Automatically picks up, and the Languages box on each post edit screen.

Translating taxonomies – categories, tags, and custom taxonomies; bulk send from the Dashboard plus manual per-term editing on the Taxonomy tab.

Translating menus – WordPress menus and the WP Menu Sync flow. This is the one piece of content that Translate Everything Automatically doesn’t translate for you.

Translating strings – texts outside posts and pages: tagline, widget titles, plugin and theme labels, admin strings.

Translating media – captions, alt text, descriptions, plus per-language media files (different image, video, or PDF per language).

Translating WooCommerce

Two how-tos cover the WooCommerce side, both delivered via WPML Multilingual & Multicurrency for WooCommerce:

How to translate WooCommerce – products, variations, categories and tags, the cart, checkout, transactional emails, block-based checkout, and the Variation translation sync setting.

How to add multi-currency and payment gateways – show prices in your shopper’s currency, set prices per currency, and route payments through localized gateways.

Translating Popular Plugins

How-tos for the most-used third-party plugins WPML integrates with:

How to translate ACF custom fields – every ACF and ACF Pro field type, Repeater, Flexible Content, Options Pages, and PHP-registered local fields.

How to translate your site for multilingual SEO – translate the SEO meta of Yoast SEO and Rank Math; verify hreflang and sitemap; check the result in Google Search Console.

How to translate Gravity Forms – Pricing Fields, Conversational forms, paginated forms with Conditional Logic, Notifications, Confirmations.

How to translate WPForms – Form Templates, Form Pages, Multi-Page Forms, Smart Conditional Logic, Confirmations, payment and marketing add-ons.

How to translate Ninja Forms – Multi-Step Forms, Layout & Styles, Image Select Fields, Save Progress, Email Actions, integration Actions.

How to translate Contact Form 7 – every form-tag, the Messages tab, both Mail templates, Acceptance, Quiz, pipe-separated values, submission integrations.

How to translate Slider Revolution 7 – the AI Translate Addon sends every module’s strings to WPML; modules appear on the Translations Dashboard and translate like posts and pages.

How to translate BuddyPress and BuddyBoss – Profile Types, Group Types, custom profile fields, group names, Activity Topics, media albums, forums, theme texts, and BuddyBoss mobile app content.

How to import multilingual content – bulk-import multilingual content from WooCommerce feeds, real-estate listings, event feeds, or any spreadsheet, via WPML Export and Import.

How to query multilingual content with WPGraphQL – query language-specific content and translations through WPGraphQL for headless WordPress sites built on Next.js, Nuxt, Astro, Gatsby, and other front-end frameworks.

How to make ElasticPress return the right results per language – fast, language-correct search; one Elasticsearch index per language so each site language returns same-language results.

For Translators

Pages translators need to do their work. The audience here is anyone with the Translator role on the site – your translation team, freelancers you’ve added, or an end client an agency has given the role to so they can edit AI translations directly.

For translators – how to translate with WPML – the translator’s guide. The WordPress admin view, the Advanced Translation Editor, and the CAT-tool / XLIFF path.

How to edit a WPML automatic translation – for end users whose pages are mostly auto-translated and who only need to edit when they spot something.

The glossary – terminology WPML must always translate the same way: product names, brand terms, “do not translate” entries.

How PTC learns your brand voice and translates like you do – PTC turns the recurring edits you make – to terminology, tone, country dialect, and links – into site-wide rules. You approve a rule once, and the same fix doesn’t come back on every page.

For Admins and Translation Managers

Pages an administrator or Translation Manager uses to oversee translation work across the site:

Translation Jobs – the manager view. A single list of every translation in motion (running, stuck, complete) so a Translation Manager can intervene: cancel a job, reassign it, or push a delayed job forward.

More Translation-Management Guides