Recommended permissions for translator

In the doku I found

Create a regular WordPress user account for them and grant them author permissions on a per-language basis. Whenever you’ll draft a new post in one language, MultilingualPress automatically will create drafts of that post for each language within your network. Translators just need to open their Dashboard and find new drafts right there to go to work with.

I think there are two problems:
1. Translator can not see new items in dahsbord if is Author in the target site (english). He must at least be Editor (Redakteur in Germany)

2. What to do with all the existing posts which where copied during creation of the new site? I already sended them back to draft, but my translator can not modify them, because as Author you can not change posts of somebody else.

I have some additional information about my problems:
1. translators can see new items of the original site in second language dashboard, but the link goes to the first language site (german in my case). So it seems impossible to give translators only rights for translation site. They need full right (and full trust) on the original site.

2. All my existing posts are copied and set to status published. I read in a git issue, that the are supposed to be in draft mode? Is this correct?

Basically, it’s just WordPress multisite. If you want to grant your translator to have write access to all content in the English site, he/she sure has to have at least the role editor. I’ll take care and will update the documentation here.

2. All my existing posts are copied and set to status published. I read in a git issue, that the are supposed to be in draft mode? Is this correct?

When MLP creates a new site based on an existing one, it just copy and pastes the database tables and therefore the post status. If there’s an issue about that, then this behavior might change somewhen in the future. However, if you don’t want to have the new site to be public accessible, you can protect the site with a plugin like ?Authenticator?.

Thank you for your answer!
1. So if I post a new entry on my german blog, than my translator gets a notification on the dashboard of the english blog (if he has editor-role in the english blog).
BUT if he clicks on the link, he will be REDIRECTED to the original entry in the german blog. So therefore it seems he needs to be Editor in BOTH sites. Is this the normal/expected behavior?
An Editor can do everything to my content. Is it possible to work with a translator with less rights at my original site? I do not trust him that much ?? (yes this sounds very different in the dokumentation)

2. No thank you, it is not necessary to change this behavior, since I can switch all entries to draft with a single SQL-Command. I just wanted to know if this is the expected behavior.
(for future reference the SQL Command here: UPDATE wp_2_posts SET post_status = 'draft' WHERE (post_type ='post' and post_status = 'publish'); where wp_2_ is the number of the site – this can vary!)

BUT if he clicks on the link, he will be REDIRECTED to the original entry in the german blog.

Yes, the dashboard widget currently shows post lists for every site not only for the current one. We’re planing to rework that widget but please do not expect this feature within the next view days ??

For the moment you should advice your translator to look for the correct list of posts inside the dashboard widget.

I really appreciate your help, but I still did not understand completely how it is supposed to work.

I read in the documentation

Hired a professional translator? Create a regular WordPress user account for them and grant them author permissions on a per-language basis.

Then we found out, that translators must have editor permissions. OK, got that point.

After that I read in the documentation

Whenever you’ll draft a new post in one language, MultilingualPress automatically will create drafts of that post for each language within your network. Translators just need to open their Dashboard and find new drafts right there to go to work with.

But if I create a post in one language, I can not find a draft in the other language?! Multilanguage only create a link there, pointing back to the source. (I only could find a draft, if I would use the function “copy from source post” in the source post itself.)

Yes, the dashboard widget currently shows post lists for every site not only for the current one.

It sounds like it is supposed to hold a list of all drafts of all sites? In my case, the dashboard never shows a link to a draft from the same site.

So I like to repeat my question: What permissions (on what site) needs a translator?

Hello Konrad,

sorry for the delay. We simply missed your last reply. ??

What exact capabilities are required for a translator clearly depends on what a translator should be (able to do) in your case.

The first quote (in your last reply) regarding “professional translators” assumes a workflow something like the following:

• user A, who is an Author or someone with more capabilities, creates a new post in language 1;
• for this post, a draft, with the original content, is created in all desired languages/sites 2-n;
• user B, who is a Translator on a specific language/site 2, translates the post (and thus needs only Author capabilities);
• publishing the post is done by user C, who is an Editor or Administrator in language/site 2.

The interesting part (regarding the capabilities) is creating the draft in other languages/sites. Depending on what you would your Translators like to be able to do, they might have the Editor or Administrator role in language/site 1, and have Author, Editor, Administrator capabilities on several/all other languages – or they aren’t even added to other languages, as their only job is translating posts that already have been created in their language/site (with the original content, whose language they, of course, have to understand).

Explaining this, or reading this, is complicated, I know. But there is no general answer to your question.

Then, there are no drafts created by default for every single language/site in your network. You have, of course, to enter either title or content. The reasons for this behavior are:

• maybe not every post should be available in every language;
• WordPress’s default behavior is to save a post only if it either has a title or content.

And as for the Dashboard widget, as David already pointed out, we already have several open tickets that will be handled in the subsequent releases.

Kind regards,
Thorsten