Not compatible with ACF repeater field, flexible content etc.

Hello!

I have found a limitation with this plugin which I feel that should be adressed. When using either the repeater-field or the flexible content-field with ACF/ACF PRO then the data gets stored on multiple row in the DB. It has always been like this with ACF. What does this mean? Read on.

This plugin bases the translation on one posts and belonging metadata, for all languages. When storing meta data then this plugin translates the contents of each meta data line in the DB. This goes for post title, content, meta data etc. The values gets separated by [:language-code]. This works fine, untill ACF stores its repeater or flexible content fields spanning over multiple meta data rows.

So let’s say I would like to have 5 rows in a repeater field on the english front page, and only 4 rows on my spanish one. Nope, this doesnt work. Since the english and spanish site is using the same post and meta data table then we are locked to have the same amount of rows. This is since this plugin translates the value of each meta data row, not the whole data structure. This removes the possibility to translate the structure of a page/post, you can only translate the contents.

Other translation-plugins usually have a post-record for each language, so you create an english front page with the post ID 30, and a spanish one with post ID 34. Then they have two separate post meta datasets, and one can deviate more between them.

If ACF would have stored their repeater and flexible content-data in a serialized form this would probably not be a problem. But due to the fear of one row growing incredible large (which is a fair point), they span out the contents of these rows into a meta data row each.

I just wanted to share this, maybe someone else has this problem, where they can translate the value of something, but the setup (like the numbers of rows) will not be translated between pages. Now you know. This is a nice plugin, but it has some limitations. If you have this problem I would strongly recommend you to use another plugin, like Polylang.

All the best
Robert S?ther