Why isn’t my content translated?

MP Express strives to translate all content on your website wherever it may be. Not just the text, but metadata used for search engine optimisation and accessibility are also included.

There may be cases where some content remains untranslated. In such a scenario, it's always a good idea to refresh the site with the 🔄 button to the left of the address bar of your web browser. If the issue persists, please read on.

Basic troubleshooting

These are the first things that are recommended to check.

Manually triggered translation

The first to try is manual translation of the page in question. You can do this by navigating to the page in the Preview, then using the Translate page button. Note that translating content this way counts against your word count quota. During your trial, you can translate up to 10,000 words.

Source language

A root cause of the problem may be that the source language of the page is not English. By default, MP Express will assume that your source language is American English. If your site is (partially or fully) in a different language, translation may not work. In this case, please reach out to us so that a different source language can be set up.

Page excluded

In the Site content section of the Dashboard, you can select folders or pages that are excluded from translation. You can notice that this is the case if not even part of the site is translated. If the page isn't excluded, parts of it are likely translated as they are likely to be repetitions form other pages.

As a sidenote, MP Express automatically re-uses translations that are repeated across pages such as the navigation or the footer.

Enable automatic translation

Once you subscribe to MP Express, the system will start to automatically look for new content and translate everything it finds. At that stage, the system should handle all the above scenarios on its own.

Issues during the first translation

When your website is first translated, we strive to ensure that the entire website is translated without any further action. However, when the page is first shown, it's possible that some part isn't translated due to the following reasons.

Translation time

The speed of the initial translation depends on dozens of factors. The most important ones are

• The speed of our connection system to your website: To translate your site, we first need to connect to your server, just like a visitor would through a browser. This allows us to see your source content. If this takes an unusually long time, translation may be delayed.
• The speed of the machine translator (MT) service: The MT service, like Google Translate, will take some time to translate your content. Depending on the load on these services, the response may be slower, slowing the entire process.

With those in mind, when some part of the site isn't translated, please allow a few minutes then refresh the page. This eliminates the possibility of the system being slow.

Network delays

During the project setup, the system works by first loading the content in the source language, like in English, then the translations are loaded. As such, the source language text will be shown for a few milliseconds before the translations are added. However, if your network connection is slower than expected, like a 3g connection on an older phone, this can be up to a few seconds instead of milliseconds. In this case, please give the system a bit more time.

Firewall

As mentioned before, MP Express will visit your website to gather the source content. However, your website is likely protected by a firewall. Such firewalls may identify our systems as a robot, and it may block access. This is completely understandable, an automated system is a robot after all. In this case, we will not be able to access your content and as such, the content can not be translated. If you suspect that this happened, please reach out to us. We'll specify an IP address that you'll need to whitelist in your firewall. This depends a lot on the specific firewall, so we'll make sure to assist you with exact steps.

Image

Websites usually use images for illustrations. However, some images may contain text that needs to be translated. A great example is on www.motionpoint.com. On the right side, there's an image that contains the words "MP Core Technology", "Adaptive translation", and "Beyond Words Service".

Images like this must be localised separately, then the translated version must be uploaded to the system. The following steps are recommended:

• Right-click the image and select Save image as...
• Open it in your favourite image editor, like the GNU Image Manipulation Program or Photoshop.
• Remove the text. You can do this by painting over it if the background is one colour. Alternatively, Photoshop's Content-Aware Fill feature may work well.
• Add the translated text in a similar font. Use the Colour Picker tool to match the exact colour accurately. You may be able to find the exact font used for the rest of your website in your editor (e.g. in WordPress). Using the same one can increase consistency.
• Save and exit.

It is recommended that you ensure the localised image is the same size and format as the original. However, this isn't a requirement. Different formats shouldn't cause too much trouble (e.g. replacing a .jpg with a .png), but a different size may break the layout of the website.

Once the image is localised, please reach out to us so that we can update the image for you. If any problem comes up with it, we'll make sure to flag it and assist in fixing it.

Translations stopped working

When translations worked before, we should focus on what changed since initial set-up. Note that images may need to be handled as described in the Image section above.

New content

When your project started, MP Express translated everything on your website. But websites often change. MP Express needs to keep up with these changes to translate any new content. After subscribing to a paid plan, you can trigger the change detection process manually with the Scan option on the Dashboard. When new content is picked up this way, it'll be automatically translated. This counts against your word limit, and you may need to upgrade to a larger plan to ensure that you can keep adding new words. However, there's no limit on the number of times you can trigger these updates.

Incorrect translation

In some rare cases, the machine translator engine may translate the segment to be the same as the original. The good news is that just like any incorrect translation, you can correct it very easily. Just use the following steps:

• Open the Dashboard.
• Navigate to Preview & Edit.
• Select the Edit button for the appropriate target language.
• If a pop-up saying that the segment list is outdated comes up, generate a new list.
• Find the segment in question.
• Edit it and press Save & Next.

Note that the changes may take some time to become visible as they propagate globally. Please give the system up to 24 hours. If the changes still do not show up, please reach out to us.

When you correct the translation for a segment, that change will propagate across the website. For example, if you correct something in the navigation of one page, that will be corrected on every page. Your improvements, however, won't be used to further improve the translator engine, so it may make similar mistakes in the future if a similar segment is added somewhere else on your site.