How to Translate WordPress Strings
Without Breaking HTML
or Shortcodes

The anatomy of a WordPress translation string

Before diagnosing what breaks, you need to understand what a WordPress translation string actually contains. Most developers think of translation strings as simple text. They are not. They are runtime-processed fragments that often carry active code which WordPress executes when building a page — code that must survive the translation process completely unchanged.

That code falls into four categories. Each one has a different syntax. Each one breaks in a different way when a translation tool processes it naively.

A single string can contain multiple types simultaneously — a common case in WooCommerce order strings and plugin notifications.

Four failure modes — and what users actually see

Knowing that strings contain code is one thing. Understanding how each failure mode manifests in production is what makes the problem viscerally clear. These are real failure patterns — the kind that show up in browser previews and support tickets.

Loco AI Auto Translator adds AI translation buttons directly inside Loco Translate — placeholder protection runs automatically on every string.

The systematic solution: extract, translate, restore

A reliable fix for broken WordPress translation strings does not come from writing a better prompt. It comes from a pre-processing step that removes all code from the string before it reaches the AI, and a post-processing step that restores it afterward. This is exactly the approach taken by Loco AI Auto Translator.

The mechanism is straightforward in principle and thorough in execution. Here is the exact sequence that runs on every string, every time, with every AI provider.

Real-time progress view during bulk translation — source and safe translated strings visible together, every string processed through the protection pipeline.

Configuring additional safeguards in the settings

Placeholder protection runs automatically — there is nothing to turn on. But Loco AI Auto Translator provides two additional tools that complement the core protection and give you control over quality in string-specific scenarios: the prompt editor and the glossary.

Custom prompt editor

Add context-specific instructions — plugin category, tone, audience — that help the AI produce better human-readable text around the protected code elements.

Glossary

Define terms that must never be translated (brand names, product names, technical terms) and terms that must always use a specific translation — a second layer of string protection beyond code elements.

🔗While protecting HTML and shortcodes is critical for German or French translations, additional challenges arise when you translate WordPress sites into RTL languages like Arabic or Hebrew. →

Together these cover both dimensions of translation safety: the code embedded in strings (handled automatically by the protection pipeline) and the human-readable text around it (guided by your prompt and glossary configuration). A WordPress translation session using both produces output that is safe to apply directly and requires minimal manual review.

If you already have broken translations — how to fix them

If you are working with existing .po files that were translated before a safe pipeline was in place, there are two practical options depending on how widespread the damage is.

Frequently asked questions

Broken placeholders and corrupted shortcodes are entirely avoidable. They exist in WordPress translation files because someone sent a raw string to a translation tool that had no mechanism for separating the code from the text. The solution is not to be more careful when pasting strings — it is to use a tool that makes the problem architecturally impossible.

Loco AI Auto Translator makes the problem architecturally impossible. The code never reaches the AI. It cannot be broken by the AI. It is restored after the AI is done. Every translation session, every string, every provider, every time.