How can I remove inactive translations?

In this article, you'll learn how to find out if you have some inactive translations, why, and how to remove them to reduce your word count.

1. Why do I have inactive translations, and where do they come from?

When a translation hasn't been used on a page for a while compared to the rest of the translations on that page, Weglot will detect it, mark the translation as "inactive," and display a helpful indicator.

Usually, that happens when you edit your original content since it will no longer match the existing translations. You can find more information about it in this article: What happens if I change the original content of my website?

This can also happen when content is dynamically generated. For example, "Today is January 25th" might get translated on the day but end up as "inactive" a few days later. In this case, we recommend creating a variable. As a result, Weglot will use only one translation for every translation that matches the variable. You can find more information about variables in this article: How can I add variables to my translations?

After some time (especially if you change your website often), you can end up with a significant amount of old sentences that are unused and take up space and words in your Weglot account. You'll then have to delete them manually. This is usually safe to do, but take care not to lose manually translated content that you might want to keep around. Translations marked as "inactive" aren't necessarily obsolete; the "inactive" label is just to let you know they haven't been updated in a while.

2. Where can I find those inactive translations?

First, go into your Weglot dashboard > Translations > Languages and click on "Actions" > "View your inactive translations":

You'll see an interface that shows all your translated language(s) and the number of potential inactive words you have for each language(s) like this:

From this page, you can click on one of these blue numbers/texts under "Potentially Inactive Words": it will bring you to your Translation List and show you all the related translations. You can also click on the Trash bin icon to mass delete all the inactive translations once you're certain you want to delete them. 

You can see how many inactive translations you have per language pair and how many of them are automatic ones.

You can easily spot them as you'll notice an icon ⚠️ below each one:

3. How can I remove those translations?

If you want to ensure the translations are inactive, you can visit the URL associated with the translations (in the translated version). To do that, follow the steps in the previous part above and then visit the page where the translations are located.

If the "Last seen date" doesn't change within the next 48 hours, and the translation is still tagged as inactive, that means you can delete it.

Otherwise, you can follow this method to synchronize your URLs.

Once you are sure that you want to delete your translation(s), you can either:

I. Remove all inactive translations in a language pair at once:

From the previously mentioned "Inactive translations" screen, you can click on the ⋮ icon on the right to delete either:

• All inactive translations, including the ones that have been manually reviewed or edited. 
• All automatic inactive translations, which is safer since these will be regenerated as-is if the sentences reappear on your website. 

II. Remove all inactive translations in all language pairs at once:

From the "Inactive translations" screen, you can:

• Click on the checkbox in the top left:

  

  
  

• Or click on a checkbox on the left of a language pair and then click on "Select all":

  

  
  

Then, you can click on the ⋮ icon on the right and choose to delete the translations:

III. Remove multiple translations at once:

• In your Translation List, use the bulk selection, check the checkbox in the top bar
• Then click on "Select all."
• And click on the trash icon at the bottom right

IV. Remove them individually

• Next to each translation, you have a trash icon
• Click on it (at the right of each translation you want to delete)
• Note that you can use the search bar at the top to find the translation easily you would like to remove