WPML – Gallery and single image not copying

Hi @fauchelafleur

WPML would handle syncing the metadata in such a case, however, it would not handle translation. Did you enable translations for media files? If so, it might be that the media items selected for the translated post are filtered out because of the media language.

Let me know!

Cheers, Jory

Hi Jory,
I tried to hear from WPML customer service, they tell me I have to reload all the media by hand.
I would like to understand, since I guess you have had experience with WPML, is the PODS plugin compatible with WPML? Are the image fields also passed into the other languages with the attached files, or do they always have to be reattached by hand one by one?

i’ve already enabled tralsations for media files, do you have any other technical pointers on tests I can do ?

thanks

Hi, has anyone encountered the same problem or can help me?
I’m desperate, I finished the site 100%, now I should translate it but upload again the medias in each page because of how the pages are made corresponds to an absurd amount of work.

Hi @fauchelafleur

I do not use WPML a lot but do have experience with it. From my knowledge WPML automatically handles media translations so it should do this by default.

However, since WPML does not have any context for custom fields it does not know it’s media or something else, it’s just raw data. Therefore it will not auto translate media for custom fields.

We are working on a multilingual toolkit for Pods which would add this context for custom media fields to WPML. For now you’ll need to select the images for each translation yourself. No need to re-upload images since the translation should still be available, it just won’t be synced automatically. Note that you do need to disable the meta sync in WPML for this to work.

Cheers, Jory

But by set the dynamic field in wpml settings to copy, shouldn’t it just copy everything?

The prob is that I set the site with 90% on dynamic fields media. Each page contains a lot of them. Translating and reselecting them within the media will take me whole days and is not easy at all.
I think that if this function (which is quite primary) doesn’t work it should be specified well, without writing that the plugin is compatible with wpml. Knowing this beforehand I would have avoided, as good a plugin as it is, for this project I absolutely could not do without that compatibility ??

Hi @fauchelafleur

WPML actually does copy everything, that part works great. However, WPML creates new posts for each translated object so the related language will have a different ID than the original.
Basically, if you have a main object with ID 1 and a relationship to ID 2, the translation would have ID 3 and it’s relationship could be ID 4. WPML then links ID 1 and 3 together and 2 and 4 as translations.

I understand that this automation feels quite primary for your project but in reality it’s just a partial area for WPML integration. You are perfectly able to translate, however, the relationship conversion (note: not translation) is not done automatically.

This automatic conversion of post/attachment/object relationships is still in progress and will most likely be an addon for Pods. We are still figuring out what to do in certain occasions, for example:

What if the original post object relates to a relationship that isn’t translated yet? Should we auto-create it? Or should we not sync it? And if we shouldn’t sync it, what would happen if the user tries the save the translated object which doesn’t include the relationship? Will it sync back to the original post and remote the relationship on the original post as well?
As you can see, implementing such an automation can quickly result in bugs.

Going back to the issue, since WPML should copy the relationship content, can you verify in the database whether it does copy the attachment ID’s or not? You might be able to configure WPML so that it will fallback to the original language and allows the use of that instead. Pods integration into WPML will auto-convert ID’s on display through WPML for it’s templates.

Cheers, Jory

When encountering similar workflow challenges, I found translation workflows to be greatly simplified by filtering content and image URLs based on naming conventions rather than clicking through many fields multiplied by many languages.

Generally for images, the wp_get_attachment_url can rewrite image URLs. So if all languages reference a copy of the same original language file, a short filter can:

• Receive the URL and attachment ID for the main language, like banner.jpg.
• Check if an image named with the current language suffix exists, like banner-de.jpg
• If the image for the current language exists, replace the URL, otherwise keep the original.

This approach allows for a workflow where images only need to be attached once, then duplicated, while all other variants can be uploaded to the Media Library generally without attachment.