Banner Text in the Wrong Language (WPML, Polylang, and Locales)

On a multilingual site the banner can mix languages: your heading in one, your buttons in another, some labels still in English. Nothing is broken. SureCookie’s text comes from two places, and each is translated a different way.

Find your symptom: buttons stay English (Case 1), one regional language shows English (Case 2), a whole language is English (Case 3), a translation file changed nothing (Case 4), category names ignore your translations (Case 5), or a saved translation is not on the site (Case 6).

Before you begin: WPML and Polylang support is in the free plugin, with nothing to switch on. WPML also needs its WPML String Translation add-on. Polylang has string translation built in.

Settings vs Bundled Text

Every piece of SureCookie text is either a setting or bundled text.

• Settings – Text you enter on SureCookie’s screens. It is stored once, in the language you typed it, and SureCookie registers it in the SureCookie group of WPML or Polylang.
• Bundled text – Wording built into the plugin. It follows the WordPress locale of the page and is translated by the language files SureCookie ships.

A setting you never changed shows its built-in default, which is bundled text. String Translation is for the wording you typed.

Setting	Where You Edit It
Banner heading and banner message	SureCookie → Settings → Banner → Content, Consent Banner tab
Preference modal title and description	SureCookie → Settings → Banner → Content, Preference Modal tab
Re-consent button label	SureCookie → Settings → Banner → Re-Consent
Blocked-content placeholder text and button text	SureCookie → Settings → Advanced → Blocked Content UI
Partner sites notice (SureCookie Pro)	SureCookie → Tracking Manager → Consent Sharing
Cookie category names and descriptions	SureCookie → Tracking Manager → All Cookies, then Manage Categories
The four banner button labels	No global field. Geographic Rules (SureCookie Pro) have per-rule fields (see Known Limitations). See Case 1.

The heading row appears only once you have entered a heading.

Everything else is bundled text, such as Always Active, Reject All, Confirm My Choices and the cookie table headings. SureCookie does not register it, so it is not in the SureCookie group.

If bundled text stays English, check the locale each language maps to. WPML lists it under WPML → Languages, and Polylang shows a Locale field for each language. On a site without either plugin, check Settings → General → Site Language. Then compare it with Languages That Ship With SureCookie below: a regional locale is Case 2, and a missing one is Case 3.

How to Translate Your Settings

Set your wording in SureCookie first, in your site’s default language. Then translate it.

In WPML

1. Go to WPML → Translations → Strings. Older WPML versions call this screen WPML → String Translation.
2. Filter the list by the SureCookie domain.
3. Click the + icon under each language and enter your translation.

In Polylang

1. Go to Languages → Translations.
2. Choose SureCookie in the group filter.
3. Enter your translation for each language and save your changes.

If the SureCookie group is missing on WPML, check that WPML String Translation is active, then reload the screen. A setting you left empty, such as a heading you never entered, has no row. Once you have translated, clear your page cache (Case 6).

Case 1: A Banner Button Label Will Not Translate

Issue. Only Essential, Accept All, Decline or Preferences stays in English, and SureCookie’s settings have no global field for them.

Cause. These four labels have no setting, so they always show their built-in default, which is bundled text. Translate them the same way as the rest of the bundled text.

Fix.

• In a bundled language they are already translated. If they still show English, check the locale (Case 2).
• For a language SureCookie does not bundle, add a translation file (Case 3).

If one of your Geographic Rules (SureCookie Pro) applies to the visitor, the rule can supply its own labels. See Known Limitations.

Note: The re-consent button has a Button Label field at SureCookie → Settings → Banner → Re-Consent, so you translate it like any other setting. A label set on the Cookie Preferences shortcode overrides it and is not translated, so leave the attribute out on a multilingual site. See SureCookie Shortcodes Reference.

Case 2: Your Site Uses a Regional Locale Such as de_CH or fr_BE

Issue. One language shows English while the others are fine, and its locale is a regional variant such as Swiss German (de_CH), Belgian French (fr_BE) or Mexican Spanish (es_MX).

Cause. WordPress loads a plugin translation by exact locale match, and there is no de_CH file.

Fix. Update to SureCookie 1.5.0 or later. From that release a regional or formal variant uses the bundled translation of its base language, so de_CH and de_DE_formal use the German translation. SureCookie Pro’s text works the same way. English and Chinese variants are excluded, because Simplified Chinese does not serve a Traditional Chinese reader. A regional file you add always wins.

Case 3: Your Language Is Not One of the Bundled Locales

Issue. An entire language, such as Ukrainian or Romanian, is English everywhere.

Cause. SureCookie ships a fixed set of locales. Anything outside it has no translation file.

Fix. Add the language yourself with the free Loco Translate plugin.

1. Go to Loco Translate → Plugins and open SureCookie.
2. Click New language and select your language.
3. For the file location, choose Custom, Loco Translate’s protected folder under wp-content/languages/loco/.
4. Translate the strings and click Save.

Avoid Author, which saves inside the plugin folder and is erased on the next update. Files in Custom load only while Loco Translate stays active.

Important: The preferences modal’s labels, such as Always Active, are printed by JavaScript and load from .json files, not the .mo file. Loco Translate writes both, but a .mo file you compile by hand leaves them English.

To ask for a language to be bundled, contact support with the locale you need.

Case 4: You Translated a File and Nothing Changed

Issue. You saved a complete translation, and nothing on the site moved.

Cause. SureCookie and SureCookie Pro are separate plugins with separate text domains, surecookie and surecookie-pro. A translation of one never reaches the other, and Loco Translate lists them under near-identical names.

Fix. Translate the plugin that owns the text.

• SureCookie (surecookie) – The built-in wording of the banner and its buttons, the preferences modal, category names and blocked-content placeholders.
• SureCookie Pro (surecookie-pro) – Geographic rule preset wording, consent sharing, and the built-in wording of the data request form and its emails.

If the data request form, its emails or its error messages stay English, update to SureCookie Pro 1.3.0 or later. Before 1.3.0, that text never loaded its translations. See Handling Data Requests.

Case 5: Cookie Category Names Will Not Translate

Issue. You translated Essential Cookies and the other category names in String Translation, and the banner still shows the original wording.

Cause. Until you save a category, SureCookie shows its built-in default name, which is bundled text and follows the page’s language. Saving stores your own wording, and String Translation translates that.

Fix. If every language on your site is bundled, leave the defaults alone: they are already translated. To use your own wording per language, store the names first.

1. Go to SureCookie → Tracking Manager → All Cookies.
2. Click Manage Categories.
3. Edit any category, change its name or description, and click Save. Saving one changed category stores them all.
4. To keep the original wording, change it back and click Save again.
5. Reload the translation screen and translate the category rows.

Note: Saved names stay in the language your admin screen used when you saved them, so translate them for every language, bundled ones included.

Case 6: A Translation Shows in the Admin but Not on the Site

Issue. Your translation is saved, but visitors still see the old wording.

Cause. The translation is not finished, or a cached page is still being served. SureCookie prints the banner text into each page, so a cached page keeps its old wording.

Fix.

1. In WPML, check that the translation for that language is complete.
2. If you changed the wording in SureCookie after translating it, update the translation to match.
3. Clear your page cache, and any CDN or host cache in front of it.

See Compatibility: Caching Plugins & Page Builders.

Languages That Ship With SureCookie

The free plugin and SureCookie Pro ship the same 20 locales, alongside English, and update them with the plugin:

Arabic (ar), Czech (cs_CZ), Danish (da_DK), German (de_DE), Greek (el), Spanish (es_ES), French (fr_FR), Hebrew (he_IL), Indonesian (id_ID), Italian (it_IT), Japanese (ja), Dutch (nl_NL), Polish (pl_PL), Brazilian Portuguese (pt_BR), Russian (ru_RU), Swedish (sv_SE), Thai (th), Turkish (tr_TR), Vietnamese (vi) and Simplified Chinese (zh_CN).

Right-to-Left Languages

When a page’s language is right-to-left, such as Arabic or Hebrew, the banner and SureCookie’s cookie policy and privacy policy pages switch to their RTL styling automatically. There is nothing to configure.

Known Limitations

Two limits apply to Geographic Rules (SureCookie Pro).

• A rule built on the GDPR, CCPA or LGPD template replaces your global banner message and button labels for every visitor it applies to, so your translations of the global text do not show for them. By default the rule uses the template’s own wording, which is SureCookie Pro’s built-in text, not a setting.
• With Use Custom Configuration on, the rule uses the message and labels you typed for it. That wording is not registered for String Translation, so it holds one value for every language.

See How to Set Up Geographic Targeting.

Next Steps

Set your wording before you translate it: see Customizing Banner Content and Manage Cookie Categories. If the banner is missing rather than mistranslated, see Banner Not Appearing: Troubleshooting.