Bulk translation with the AI translate screen

The bulk screen analyses what exists on the site, shows you what can be translated, and processes your selection one element at a time. It is the route to use for anything larger than a single post.

Open it at Languages → AI translate. That menu belongs to Polylang; if Polylang is not active, the entry does not exist.

How POM AI uses Polylang

POM AI does not manage languages. Polylang owns the language list, which post types and taxonomies are translatable, the URL structure and the language switcher. POM AI reads that configuration and writes translations into it.

Two consequences:

• Configure Polylang first. A post type not marked translatable in Polylang is reported by POM AI as not translatable, and no amount of selecting will change that.
• Translations are real Polylang translations. They appear in the language columns, work with the switcher and behave like manually created translations.

Step 1 — Choose the language pair

At the top of the screen, choose the origin language and the destination language. Both lists come from your Polylang configuration and default to the first two languages defined.

Take a moment over this. The whole run uses one pair; there is no per-item override.

Step 2 — Analyze elements

Select Analyze elements. POM AI loads up to 100 items from one group at a time. Select Load more elements to continue. Your existing selections remain checked as you load more.

The list includes translated public post types and taxonomies you can manage, plus navigation menus when you have menu-editing permission. It shows each item's ID, its parent ID when present and the existing translation ID. Attachments and types not configured as translatable in Polylang are excluded.

Analysing costs no AI credits. Items with an existing translation are labelled and have no checkbox. Selectable items have no destination translation yet. Permission to edit a source, create its destination and preserve its publication state is checked before translation; a listed menu must be assigned to a source-language location before it can be translated.

Step 3 — Select what to translate

Tick the items you want. The Select/deselect all control applies to the selectable items already loaded. It does not select items on pages you have not loaded.

Because already-translated items have no checkbox, this screen cannot accidentally overwrite an existing translation. That is the main safety difference from the per-post button.

Step 4 — Estimate and confirm

Use the button that calculates credits before confirming. POM AI prices the whole selection, showing an elapsed-seconds counter while it works, then asks:

This will deduct approximately N credits from your account. Do you wish to continue?

Read the number against your balance before accepting. The alternative button skips the estimate and starts immediately — reasonable for two or three items, not for a real bulk run. See Bulk translation and credits.

Step 5 — Watch it run

After confirmation the page scrolls to a progress area showing a bar and a status line in the form 37 out of 250 (15%). Elements are processed strictly one at a time, and each result is appended to a summary list below — a message per success, an error message per failure.

Leave the tab open. The run is driven from the browser, so navigating away stops it. Elements already completed stay translated and stay charged; the rest simply never start.

When it finishes, the status reports completion and a Start over button appears.

Order of processing

Selected terms are processed before posts, and menus follow the content they reference. Within each group, selected parents are translated before their children. That is what lets hierarchical content attach to the right translated parent.

Do not defeat this by selecting a child page without its parent. The child will translate, but it will not sit under a translated parent that does not exist.

Reading the summary

The summary is the record of what happened. Read it rather than assuming success:

• a message per element, in processing order;
• failures shown inline as errors, without stopping the run.

A run with fifteen failures still completes, and the failures are easy to miss if you only look at the progress bar reaching 100%.

Practical advice for a large site

Do a pilot. Translate ten representative items, have them reviewed by someone who reads the language, then decide whether to continue. A 2,000-element run that turns out to have the wrong terminology throughout is expensive twice.

Work in batches by post type. Translating pages, then posts, then products keeps the review manageable and the failures attributable.

Do terms first. Translating taxonomy terms as their own batch means later post translations reuse them instead of creating them, which makes the post-level costs predictable.

Avoid select-all on a large site. Selecting deliberately is slower and much cheaper.

Coordinate with editors. If a source changes during its translation request, the tool stops that write and asks you to reload. Review the summary for permission or conflict messages before trying that item again.