Want to translate your consent banner and cookie information into another language without doing it manually? WPConsent’s automatic translation feature handles the heavy lifting by using AI to translate your content in the background. This guide walks you through using automatic translation to localize your banner, cookie categories, services, and cookie descriptions.

Pro Feature: This feature requires a WPConsent Plus plan or higher.

Table of contents

• Prerequisites
• Enabling a target language
• Starting automatic translation
• Monitoring translation progress
• Reviewing translated content
• Making manual corrections
• How translation works
• Supported languages
• Verifying your setup
• FAQ
• Conclusion

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have:

• A WPConsent Plus plan or higher activated on your site
• At least 1 language enabled in WPConsent >> Cookies >> Languages
• Your default language content already configured (banner text, cookies, services, and categories)

Enabling a target language

First, navigate to WPConsent >> Cookies >> Languages in your WordPress admin.

Check the box next to the language you want to translate to from the Available Languages list. Then, click Save Changes to enable it.

The language now appears in the Selected Languages section at the top of the page.

Starting automatic translation

In the Selected Languages section, find the language you just enabled. Click the Auto-Translate button next to the language name.

A confirmation dialog appears. Select Yes to proceed with the translation.

WPConsent schedules the translation as a background job. You don’t need to stay on the page while it runs.

Monitoring translation progress

After the translation starts, a progress notice appears at the top of the page.

The notice shows the current percentage and a spinner icon. Translation takes 2 to 5 minutes depending on how much content you have.

You can navigate to other WPConsent admin pages while the translation runs. The progress notice remains visible across all WPConsent pages.

To stop the translation early, click Cancel. This resets the translation status and lets you start over.

Reviewing translated content

When the translation finishes, a success notice appears.

Click the review the translation link in the notice to switch your admin view to the translated language.

Navigate to WPConsent >> Banner >> Content to check banner text translations. Verify that button labels, titles, descriptions, and policy text read correctly in the target language.

Then, navigate to WPConsent >> Cookies to review cookie and service translations. Expand each category to confirm that names and descriptions are accurate.

Making manual corrections

If any translation needs adjustment, use the language switcher (the globe icon in the WPConsent admin header) to select the target language. Edit the fields directly and click Save Changes.

Warning: Re-running automatic translation overwrites any manual edits you made to translated content for non-default languages. If you want to preserve your manual corrections, do not re-run auto-translate for that language after editing.

How translation works

Content batching

WPConsent divides your content into batches of approximately 30 strings each. A batch can include:

• Banner field text (titles, buttons, descriptions, policy text)
• Cookie category names and descriptions
• Service names and descriptions
• Cookie names, descriptions, and duration text

The system processes 1 batch at a time with a brief pause between batches. This prevents overloading the translation API.

AI-powered translation

WPConsent sends translation requests to its cloud translation service, which uses AI large language models to translate your content. The service requires your license key for authentication and validates that your plan is Plus or higher before processing.

Background processing

Translation runs as a background job so it doesn’t block your admin session. This prevents timeouts and lets you keep working.

Each batch is translated and saved immediately. If 1 batch fails, the others still succeed. The final status shows partial completion if some batches fail.

Caching

The source strings are cached in a transient for 24 hours. This avoids redundant lookups if you re-run translation within that window. The cache is cleared automatically when you start a new translation.

Supported languages

The AI translation service supports a wide range of languages, including:

• European: German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Greek, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Slovenian, Icelandic, Macedonian, Albanian, Galician, Basque, Catalan, Occitan, Corsican, Luxembourgish, Maltese, Welsh, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian
• Asian: Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Malay, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Kannada, Punjabi, Urdu, Burmese, Khmer, Lao, Sinhala, Nepali, and Mongolian
• Middle Eastern & African: Arabic, Persian (Farsi), Hebrew, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Kazakh, Tajik, Pashto, Swahili, Yoruba, Zulu, Xhosa, Somali, Chichewa, and Tswana
• Other: Russian, Ukrainian, Tagalog, Haitian Creole, Sundanese, Tatar, Samoan, Fijian, Malagasy, Yiddish, and Esperanto

You can check language support on the Languages page. Languages with a visible Auto-Translate button are fully supported. WPConsent does not auto-translate between English variants (for example, en_US to en_GB).

Verifying your setup

After translation completes, verify your setup:

1. Navigate to WPConsent >> Cookies >> Languages and confirm the target language shows in the Selected Languages section.
2. Use the language switcher to select the translated language.
3. Navigate to WPConsent >> Banner >> Content and confirm all banner fields contain translated text.
4. Navigate to WPConsent >> Cookies and expand each category to confirm translated names and descriptions.
5. Visit your site’s front end and switch to the target language to confirm the banner displays translated content.

FAQ

Why don’t I see the Auto-Translate button?

The Auto-Translate button only appears for languages that are supported by the translation service. If a language isn’t supported, the button won’t show next to it. Also verify that your plan is Plus or higher by navigating to WPConsent >> Settings to confirm your license is active. The button also won’t appear for translations between English variants (for example, en_US to en_GB).

My translation failed immediately. What do I do?

Check your internet connection and verify that your license key is valid. Translation requires communication with WPConsent’s cloud service. If your server blocks outbound requests, contact your hosting provider.

My translation is stuck at 0%. How do I fix it?

Wait 30 seconds and refresh the page. If the progress doesn’t update, click Cancel and try again.

Why is some of my content not translated?

If you re-run auto-translate, it overwrites previously translated content, including any manual edits. To translate only missing fields without affecting existing ones, fill in any gaps manually instead of re-running the full translation.

How can I improve translation quality?

Automatic translation works best for technical text like cookie descriptions and standard UI elements. For marketing copy or nuanced legal language, review and edit the translations manually after automatic translation finishes.

Conclusion

Automatic translation makes it simple to localize your consent banner and cookie information for a multilingual audience. After enabling a target language, a single click uses AI to translate all your content in the background.

To learn how to manage multiple languages, configure the language picker, and work with third-party translation plugins, see the guide on setting up multilanguage support.