๐Ÿ“– Documentation

How Translatio AI Works

From installation to your first translated page โ€” a complete guide to making WordPress multilingual with AI.

1. Installation

Translatio AI is a standard WordPress plugin. Install it in one of two ways:

Option A โ€” WordPress Admin

1

Upload the plugin ZIP

Go to Plugins โ†’ Add New โ†’ Upload Plugin and select the downloaded ai-translator-engine.zip file. Click Install Now then Activate Plugin.

2

Polylang is required

Translatio works with Polylang (free) or Polylang Pro for language routing. Install it first from Plugins โ†’ Add New โ†’ search "Polylang".

3

Follow the onboarding wizard

After activation, a 4-step wizard appears automatically. It takes under 3 minutes and walks you through API setup, language selection, and your first translation.

Option B โ€” WP-CLI

# Install via WP-CLI
wp plugin install ai-translator-engine.zip --activate

# Check the installation
wp ait status

Server requirements: PHP 8.0+, WordPress 6.0+, MySQL 5.7+ (or MariaDB 10.3+), the intl PHP extension (for slug transliteration), gzcompress (for snapshot compression).

2. API Provider Setup

Translatio sends translation requests directly from your WordPress site to your chosen AI provider. Your content never passes through our servers โ€” you control the API keys and the spend.

Supported providers

๐Ÿค–
Anthropic Claude

claude-haiku-4-5 (default). Best for nuanced, context-aware translation. Recommended for Ultimate/Agency.

๐Ÿง 
OpenAI GPT-4o

gpt-4o-mini (default). Excellent accuracy across all language pairs. Available from Ultimate plan.

๐ŸŒŠ
DeepL

Best-in-class for European languages (EN, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL, PL, RUโ€ฆ). Available from Pro plan.

๐Ÿ”ต
Google Translate

Neural Machine Translation v2. 100+ language pairs, very economical for high-volume use.

Adding an API key

Go to Translatio โ†’ Settings โ†’ AI Providers. Enter your API key for each provider you want to use. Click Validate to test the connection before saving.

โš ๏ธ Keep your API keys private. Never share or commit them to version control. Translatio encrypts stored API keys using libsodium before saving to the database.

3. Add Target Languages

Go to Translatio โ†’ Languages. Your plan determines how many languages you can add:

  • Free: 2 target languages
  • Pro: 5 target languages
  • Ultimate: 15 target languages
  • Agency: All 50+ languages

Click + Add Language, select from the dropdown (50+ languages with flags and native names), and click Add. The plugin shows your remaining language slots at all times.

๐Ÿ’ก RTL languages are handled automatically. Arabic, Hebrew, Persian (Farsi), and Urdu activate right-to-left layout in Polylang automatically when added.

4. Your First Translation

Go to Translatio โ†’ Translate. You'll see:

  • A list of your pages/posts with Elementor content detected
  • Credit cost estimate per page before translating
  • Language selector for the target language
  • Option to include SEO metadata (Pro+) and forms (Pro+)

Select your target language, check the estimated credit cost, and click โšก Translate. Translatio queues the job and shows real-time progress. Your first page typically completes in under 30 seconds.

Credits

Credits are how Translatio measures translation workload. The formula is simple:

source characters ร— 2 ร— target languages = credits used

What counts as "source characters"?

  • Page title + all text content (HTML stripped)
  • Elementor widget text (headings, paragraphs, button labels)
  • SEO title and meta description (when SEO translation is enabled)
  • Image alt text and captions
  • Form labels and placeholders

Credit preview: Translatio always shows you the exact credit cost estimate before starting any translation. You can cancel before committing.

The 9-Step Translation Pipeline

Every page translation goes through a carefully orchestrated pipeline that guarantees data integrity:

Step 1
Snapshot
Backup current Elementor data
Step 2
Parse
JSON โ†’ Immutable tree
Step 3
Extract
Collect text segments
Step 4
TM Lookup
Check Translation Memory
Step 5
Protect
Shield dynamic tags & shortcodes
Step 6
Translate
Batch API calls to AI
Step 7
Restore
Replace protection tokens
Step 8
Merge
TM + API + Glossary
Step 9
Write
Save to post meta + clear cache

If any step fails โ€” API error, JSON corruption, network timeout โ€” the pipeline automatically rolls back from the snapshot saved in Step 1. The post is always left in a valid state.

Translation Memory

Translation Memory (TM) is a database of previously translated segments. When Translatio encounters a piece of text it has seen before, it serves the cached translation instantly โ€” no API call, no credit cost.

How it saves credits

Typical Elementor sites have a lot of repeated content: the same header/footer widget appears on every page, standard button text like "Learn More" or "Contact Us" is reused across dozens of pages. Without TM, each occurrence costs credits. With TM, only the first occurrence costs credits โ€” all subsequent occurrences are free.

On a typical 100-page Elementor site, Translation Memory reduces costs by 40โ€“70%.

Quality gate

Only translations above the minimum quality score (default: 70/100) are stored in TM. This prevents low-quality translations from being cached and reused indefinitely.

Snapshots & Rollback

Before every translation, Translatio saves a compressed snapshot of your Elementor data to ait_elementor_snapshots. Snapshots are retained for 30 days then pruned automatically.

Rolling back via the admin

Go to Translatio โ†’ Translate โ†’ [post name] โ†’ Rollback. Select the snapshot you want to restore (you'll see a list with timestamps and file sizes). Click โ†ฉ Rollback. The original content is restored in seconds.

Rolling back via WP-CLI

# Roll back post 42 to pre-translation state (Catalan)
wp ait elementor rollback --post-id=42 --lang=ca

# Roll back to a specific snapshot
wp ait elementor rollback --post-id=42 --lang=ca --snapshot-key=abc123def456

Elementor Translation

Translatio has 25 built-in widget rules covering every common Elementor widget. For custom and third-party widgets, the GenericTextRule fallback heuristically extracts human-readable text while skipping CSS classes, IDs, URLs, and other non-translatable values.

Translating Elementor templates

# Translate all templates including popups and theme builder
wp ait elementor templates --lang=ca

# Translate only popup templates
wp ait elementor templates --lang=ca --type=popup

SEO Translation

SEO translation is available from the Pro plan and above. It translates all SEO metadata in your active SEO plugin (Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO, or SEOPress) and manages hreflang, canonicals, and the multilingual sitemap automatically.

# Translate all page SEO metadata to Catalan
wp ait seo translate --lang=ca

# Translate with AI SEO optimization (trims over-limit fields)
wp ait seo translate --lang=ca --optimize

# Run SEO audit for Catalan
wp ait seo audit --lang=ca --format=table

Forms Translation

Form translation is available from the Pro plan. It translates all field labels, placeholders, submit buttons, and confirmation messages. Translated form content is served automatically based on the active Polylang language.

# Translate all forms to Catalan
wp ait forms translate --lang=ca

# Translate only Contact Form 7 forms
wp ait forms translate --lang=ca --plugin=cf7

Bulk Translation

Bulk translation queues all pages for background processing. Go to Translatio โ†’ Translate โ†’ Bulk, select your target language and post type, review the credit estimate, and click โ–ถ Start Bulk Translation.

The real-time progress bar shows completed/failed/skipped pages, API cost, and estimated time remaining. You can pause, resume, or cancel at any time.

Tip for large sites: Run bulk translation overnight or during low-traffic hours. The queue worker respects PHP memory and time limits and pauses automatically if resources are constrained.

WP-CLI Commands

Translatio has a full WP-CLI interface for automation, scripting, and CI/CD pipelines.

wp ait status # Plugin status + credit balance
wp ait translate --lang=ca # Translate all pages inline
wp ait queue status # Check queue health

wp ait elementor translate --lang=ca --queue # Queue bulk job
wp ait elementor rollback --post-id=42 --lang=ca
wp ait elementor templates --lang=ca
wp ait elementor glossary add --source=es --target=ca --from="widget" --to="component"

wp ait seo translate --lang=ca --optimize
wp ait seo audit --lang=ca
wp ait seo generate-sitemap

wp ait forms translate --lang=ca

Ready to try it yourself?

Download the free plugin and translate your first page in minutes.