WP-CLI Commands for Multilingual WordPress Management

If you manage WordPress sites at scale — agencies, developers, DevOps — you spend most of your time in a terminal, not in wp-admin. Lang Forge ships a full suite of WP-CLI commands so every action you can take in the admin UI has a scriptable equivalent.

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Why WP-CLI matters for multilingual sites

• CI/CD pipelinespull translations as part of a deploy, validate string coverage before shipping a new feature
• Bulk operationstranslating a thousand posts one at a time in the browser is painful; wp langforge translate --all --lang=de is one command
• Automationagency teams set up nightly cron jobs to populate translation memory, export XLIFF, or check for outdated translations
• Scriptingshell scripts that set up a brand-new multilingual site in one pass

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The 11 commands

Status and inspection

wp langforge status

Prints overall translation status: languages configured, posts per language, translation progress percentage, outdated translations, and AI credit usage.

wp langforge status --lang=de --post-type=product

Filters the status output by language and post type.

Translation

wp langforge translate <post-id> --lang=de --ai

Translates a specific post into the target language. The --ai flag routes through the AI pipeline; without it, the post is duplicated as an untranslated draft.

wp langforge translate --all --lang=de --ai

Translates every published post into German using AI. Shows a cost estimate before running and asks for confirmation (bypass with --yes).

Export and import

wp langforge export --lang=de --format=xliff --output=translations.xlf

Exports all content for a given target language as XLIFF 1.2.

wp langforge export --lang=de --format=csv --output=translations.csv

CSV format for simpler workflows.

wp langforge import translations.xlf

Imports translations from an XLIFF or CSV file. Auto-detects format from file extension.

Translation memory

wp langforge tm-populate

Scans all existing translated posts and populates the translation memory. Useful after migrating from another translation plugin or after importing a large batch of content.

wp langforge tm-search "Buy now" --source=en --target=de

Searches the translation memory for a string and prints matches with similarity scores.

Glossary

wp langforge glossary-import glossary.csv

Imports glossary entries from CSV.

wp langforge glossary-export glossary.csv

Exports the current glossary to CSV.

Site duplication

wp langforge duplicate --lang=de --ai

Duplicates the entire site into a new language and optionally runs AI translation in the background. Equivalent to the one-click duplication feature in the admin, but fully scriptable.

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Standard WP-CLI conventions

Every command follows WP-CLI’s conventions:

• --help on any command shows full usage and flag documentation
• --format=json|csv|yaml|table for machine-readable output
• --dry-run on every write command to preview without making changes
• Exit codes that are safe to check in shell scripts (0 for success, non-zero for failure)
• Colorized output when running in a TTY, plain when piped

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Use cases

• Agency onboardinga shell script that configures a new client site with the right languages, URL format, and starter content in one command
• Nightly content synca cron job that exports XLIFF for the current week’s new posts and emails it to a translation vendor
• CI test coveragea pipeline step that runs wp langforge status --fail-if-incomplete to block deploys if new strings are untranslated
• Data migrationtm-populate after importing content from another CMS
• Disaster recoveryscripted re-import of translations from a backup file

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Ready to script your multilingual workflow?

Get Lang Forge — from $54/year →

WP-CLI commands are included in every paid plan and in the free version on WordPress.org.