How to turn off auto translate in Facebook ads

Say a friend in Madrid sends you a screenshot. It is your ad, in Spanish, a language you never wrote it in. Your line said "Buy two, save 15 per cent", and the Spanish promises 15 per cent off one.

Two different switches get called auto translate in Facebook ads. One sits in Ads Manager, where Meta can translate the text of an ad you built. The other sits in the app of whoever is reading, where Facebook offers to translate a post or a comment.

This post is mostly about the first, the one you control and the one that touches your offer. To turn it off, open the ad's creative, go to the Translations step and leave the Text, Overlay and Voice toggles off. The reader's switch gets a section of its own.

What Meta translates, and in which ads

Meta calls it generative AI translations. Meta's help page on AI translations says the features translate the text, voice and image overlays in your ad into your audience's preferred language.

There are three. Text translations cover the primary text and headline on single image ads, video ads and carousels. Overlay translations cover the text laid over a single image. Voice translations dub the original voiceover of a single video ad.

For text, Meta names twelve languages from English, plus German and Spanish into English, and says the list includes these.

An older Translate button did a similar job for text. Meta says it is gradually being removed. Meta also says the new features may not be available to you yet, so the Translations step may not be there.

How to turn off auto translate in Facebook ads, and where the switch is

Meta writes its steps for turning translations on. They are also the places to check that they are off. Walk through Meta's steps for AI translations and stop at each toggle:

1. Go to Meta Ads Manager and select + Create, or open your draft.
2. Complete the steps until you reach Ad setup. Choose Create ad, then pick Single image or video, or Carousel, as the format.
3. Go to Ad creative. For a single image or video, click Set up creative and work through it to the Translations step. For a carousel, click + Add cards.
4. Under Languages, unselect any you did not choose. Meta says to expand the section to select and unselect languages.
5. Check the Text, Overlay and Voice toggles. Meta's steps tell you to turn each one on, so leave each one off.
6. Click Save, finish the ad and click Publish.

Meta's steps do not say whether the toggles start on or off. Meta's page on default-on creative features says Review defaults, next to the advanced preview, lists everything labelled On by default, including a category called Advantage+ creative translations. Click Edit beside one to reach the setup section where you can opt out.

For a live ad, Meta lists Translations among the Advantage+ creative enhancements. Meta's page on turning enhancements off says to open the Ads tab, select the ad, click Edit and open the Advantage+ creative section. Some enhancements can only be turned off in Advanced preview, so check both.

What a machine translation does to an offer

The post on what changes when an ad crosses a border names four things that differ by country: the name, the price, the offer and the claims. A translation changes the words and leaves those four where they were.

For AI text translations, Meta says you can't edit the translated text. So when the Spanish gives 15 per cent off one item, you cannot fix the sentence. Your choices are to leave that language on or switch it off.

You can read it first. Click See details under Text to see how your text will appear in each available language, and use the preview's language dropdown to see it by placement. Read the offer line in every language you leave on, and turn off the ones you cannot read. That is judgment, not Meta's rule.

Nothing on the Meta pages above says a translation resets a price, a delivery threshold or a claim for the country, so assume it does not. To judge the wording, read how local brands phrase a similar offer, and see competitors' Meta ads in that country to find them.

What you give up, and how to reach a language anyway

With no language chosen, Meta's page on advertising in multiple languages says it delivers your ad to people its systems predict can understand the language of your creative. A translated ad can reach readers of another language without you writing a word. An untranslated one reaches the readers of the language you wrote.

To reach another language in your own words, Meta's dynamic language optimization lets you add up to 48 languages beside your default, with your own headline and primary text for each. Meta says it is moving into the Translations step, and recommends using either that or text translations, not both. If you write the lines yourself, check the Text toggle is off.

How to turn off auto translate in Facebook as a reader

That switch belongs to whoever is reading. Meta's help page on turning off translation options says you can turn off translation options for posts and comments in your language settings. The steps are on that page, so follow Meta's rather than a guide's.

The same settings are where Meta says you pick the language posts and comments are translated into.

As an advertiser you cannot turn this off for anyone else, and none of the Ads Manager steps above touch it. Meta describes the setting for posts and comments. The pages read for this post do not say whether it also reaches a paid ad. When a customer sends a screenshot, check your Translations step and ask how their app is set up.

Writing the ad again instead of translating it

Translation carries the words of the ad you have. Writing it again starts from the market. Nomi's Markets feature takes an approved ad and the countries you sell in, and each version comes back in that country's language with the type refitted.

The picture stays still and the original stays beside the new versions. A price Nomi has not been told is left out, and the row says Generic. Nomi writes in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Slovenian and Spanish.