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Translation Watchdog for TranslatePress self-updates

Finds text that was never translated on a TranslatePress site — for any language combination.

by Patrick O'Brien · github.com/pobrien333/translation-watchdog-for-translatepress

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Install

No release zip yet. The repository archive installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow:

wp plugin install https://github.com/pobrien333/translation-watchdog-for-translatepress/archive/refs/heads/main.zip

Ships its own WordPress updater (built-in updater), so new versions show up under Dashboard → Updates.

Readme github.com/pobrien333/translation-watchdog-for-translatepress ↗

Translation Watchdog icon: a split letter A, a scan line finds the seam

Translation Watchdog for TranslatePress

Finds text that was never translated on a TranslatePress site — for any language combination.

It adds a Watchdog tab to the TranslatePress settings. On demand, it fetches every public page twice — the original and each translation, as a logged-out visitor sees them — and lists every piece of text that is still identical. TranslatePress' own string tables then tell it why:

Badge Meaning
Not translated TranslatePress knows the text but has no translation.
Translated, not shown A translation exists, but the page still shows the original — usually a spelling difference (curly quotes, dashes, HTML entities) between the stored string and the page.
Not in TranslatePress The text isn't in TranslatePress' string list — it may come from JavaScript, an image or a plugin TranslatePress doesn't see.

Text that was deliberately translated to the same words (brand names, "FAQ") is recognised and hidden automatically.

Status: 0.x — in testing. Expect changes.

How it looks

The Watchdog tab during a scan: results appear page by page

  1. Refresh — scans the whole site again. Runs automatically when you open the tab.
  2. Progress — results appear while the scan runs, with a running count.
  3. Re-check — checks just this page again after you fixed it.
  4. Open in translator — opens the page straight in the TranslatePress editor.
  5. Status — why the text is untranslated (see the table above).
  6. Skip — hides a false positive, such as a name that stays the same in every language.

Settings: allowlist and ignored elements

  1. Allowlist — words and names that stay the same in every language (brands, product names). They are ignored inside any text.
  2. Ignore elements — CSS selectors for whole components that should not be checked, such as a cookie banner. Every finding shows the element it sits in, ready to copy.

Skipped strings, each with an Undo link

  1. Undo — brings a skipped string back; it shows again on the next scan.

Why does this exist?

If you translate your site by hand to keep its quality and tone consistent, it's easy to miss a string — a button label, an image's alt text, a line somewhere. And every time you change the design, new strings appear that you might forget to translate.

TranslatePress shows you a page at a time, so there is no quick way to see what's still missing across the whole site. This plugin does exactly that: one scan, and you get a list of every untranslated piece of text, page by page, with a link straight into the TranslatePress editor. So you know your visitors don't see a mix of languages.

Features

  • Checks visible text, image alt, title, placeholder, aria-label, the page title and the meta description.
  • Runs only when you open the tab or click Refresh — nothing in the background.
  • Results appear while the scan runs; requests are made in parallel.
  • Every finding links to the translated page and straight into the TranslatePress editor.
  • Re-check (↻) a single page after fixing it, without a full scan — work through the list page by page.
  • Header/footer/popup strings are grouped once under Sitewide.
  • Skip hides false positives, Undo brings them back; an allowlist ignores brand and product names.
  • Ignore elements: CSS selectors for whole components that should not be checked (hidden screen-reader text, a cookie banner…). Every finding shows the element it is in.
  • Ignore page leaves a page out of future scans (an unpublished popup, a seasonal page); Undo brings it back.
  • Retry rescans only the pages that could not be fetched.
  • Several translation languages: choose which ones to check.

Requirements

WordPress 6.5+, PHP 8.0+, TranslatePress (free or paid).

Installation

Download the zip from the latest release, then Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin. Open Settings → TranslatePress → Watchdog.

Updates appear in the WordPress admin like any other plugin (from GitHub releases).

Filters

Filter Purpose
trwatch_urls Array of source-language URLs to check.
trwatch_post_types Post types whose entries are scanned (default: public types that are not excluded from search — page-builder template libraries are left out).
trwatch_sslverify Whether to verify SSL certificates when fetching your own pages (default: off on local hosts such as *.test, on everywhere else).

Development

composer install
composer lint     # PHP syntax
composer phpcs    # WordPress security/i18n sniffs

Releases: bump the version in the plugin header and TRWATCH_VERSION, add a CHANGELOG.md entry, then push a tag vX.Y.Z. The release workflow builds the zip (with the .pot file) and attaches it to a GitHub release.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later.