How to Edit WPML’s Automatic Translation

For the broader picture of who translates a WPML site – yourself, AI, your translators, or a professional service – see Who can translate your site.

You’ll Rarely Need to Edit

PTC translates with full-page context, follows your site’s tone and terminology, and learns from edits you’ve made before. Most pages come out the way you’d write them yourself. When a page does need a change, you can edit it in a couple of minutes. WPML also backs PTC translations with a translation quality guarantee: if a translation falls short of the standard, WPML fixes it or refunds the words.

Three Tabs You’ll Use

Sign in to the site with the user account your agency or site administrator created for you. In the WordPress admin, click WPML > Translations. You’ll see three tabs:

• Translation Tasks is your queue. Every page that’s ready for your review or edit appears here.
• Improve Translations is where PTC turns your recurring edits into site-wide rules. When the same kind of change recurs across your translations – a term, a link, a country dialect, a tone shift – one click applies it everywhere. See How PTC learns your brand voice and translates like you do.
• Glossary is your direct entry for terminology rules. Add brand names, product names, and “always translate X as Y” entries. The dedicated reference is on The glossary in WPML.

You’ll use Translation Tasks the most. The other two save you time over the long run.

Edit This Specific Translation

Use this flow when you spot a problem on one page and want to edit that page.

1. Go to WPML > Translations > Translation Tasks to open your queue.
2. Find the page you want to edit. Filter by language pair (e.g., English » Spanish) or by status to narrow down faster. The title column links to the source content if you want to compare.
3. Click Translate on the row to open the Advanced Translation Editor. (The button is labelled Translate even on completed rows; clicking it lets you edit the translation that’s already there.) The source appears on the left and the translation on the right, segment by segment.
4. Click a segment to edit its translation. Apply formatting (bold, italics, links) using the marker buttons. Move on to the next segment when you’re satisfied.
5. When you’re done with all the segments, click Save and Complete. The translation publishes to the live site immediately if your administrator set Publish without review, or moves to the review queue otherwise.

If a task isn’t yours to handle (wrong language, or content you don’t have authority over), click Resign to return it to the queue for someone else.

Teach WPML to Translate That Way Going Forward

When you find yourself making the same edit on several pages, you don’t have to keep making it. WPML notices the pattern and offers a one-click fix. Click the Improve Translations tab to see what WPML has noticed. Suggestions are grouped into four categories.

Link Translations

You’ve redirected en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein to es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein on several pages. Accept the suggestion and WPML applies the mapping across the whole site. Every existing page that links to the English Wikipedia article gets re-translated to use the Spanish one. Future pages do the same automatically.

Glossary Terms

You’ve translated employee as empleado (not colaborador) several times. Accept the suggestion and the term joins your glossary. Existing pages get re-translated using the new term; future translations apply it automatically. The same pattern works for keep in original (for example, you’ve kept GitHub in English on Spanish pages) and for proper nouns.

Regional Variant

You’re translating to German but your edits keep using Swiss vocabulary (Velo, parkieren, Adieu). Accept the suggestion and WPML switches the engine to Swiss German (de-CH) for that language pair. This applies to future translations only. Existing translations stay as they are. To refresh them, go to Translation Dashboard, select the affected pages, click Translate selected, and tick Overwrite existing translations.

Formality

You’ve shifted from formal to casual German (du / deine instead of Sie / Ihre) on several pages. Accept the suggestion to use the casual register going forward. Like regional variant, this applies to future translations only; the Overwrite existing translations step refreshes past pages if you want them consistent.

When you accept link and glossary suggestions, WPML batches the affected pages into a queue at the bottom of the page. When you’re done reviewing, click I’m done – retranslate and WPML re-translates them all at once.

Add Brand Names and Rules Directly to the Glossary

You don’t have to wait for WPML to notice a pattern. If you know a term has a specific translation (or shouldn’t be translated at all), add it to the glossary directly.

1. Go to WPML > Translations > Glossary to open the glossary editor.
2. Click Add term. Type the source word or phrase and its translation. Check do not translate if you want the original kept on the translated page instead.
3. Add a short description if it helps a translator decide when to apply the term (for example, “the product name; never translate”).
4. Click Save to finalize the entry.

Use the Update translations button at the top to refresh existing translations with the new glossary entries.

The glossary covers brand names, product names, technical terms, and abbreviations. Anything where consistency across the site matters more than a literal translation belongs here.

What to Do If You Spot a Bigger Problem

Sometimes a whole page reads poorly, not just a single segment. The translation misses the meaning, the tone, or the cadence of the source. In that case, open the page in the editor and rewrite the affected segments by hand. If you think the engine should have done better, your site administrator can claim a refund through WPML’s translation quality guarantee. The guarantee is part of WPML’s promise behind PTC.