Simple translation

The simple_translation module provides a user interface that allows users to copy pages and translatable snippets into another language.

  • Copies are created in the source language (not translated)

  • Copies of pages are in draft status

Content editors need to translate the content and publish the pages.

Note

Simple Translation is optional. It can be switched out by third-party packages. Like the more advanced wagtail-localize.

Basic configuration

Add "wagtail.contrib.simple_translation" to INSTALLED_APPS in your settings file:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    "wagtail.contrib.simple_translation",
]

Run python manage.py migrate to create the necessary permissions.

In the Wagtail admin, go to settings and give some users or groups the “Can submit translations” permission.

Page tree synchronisation

Depending on your use case, it may be useful to keep the page trees in sync between different locales.

You can enable this feature by setting WAGTAILSIMPLETRANSLATION_SYNC_PAGE_TREE to True.

WAGTAILSIMPLETRANSLATION_SYNC_PAGE_TREE = True

When this feature is turned on, every time an editor creates a page, Wagtail creates an alias for that page under the page trees of all the other locales.

For example, when an editor creates the page "/en/blog/my-blog-post/", Wagtail creates an alias of that page at "/fr/blog/my-blog-post/" and "/de/blog/my-blog-post/".