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The easiest way to translate a Shopify store is to use a translation app that can handle the bulk of the work automatically, then give you enough control to step in and fine-tune the content that matters. If you’re looking for a practical way to translate Shopify, that’s the approach I’d recommend.
And if you’re already selling internationally, or thinking about it, I’d definitely put translation fairly high on your list.
According to CSA Research’s Can’t Read, Won’t Buy study, 76% of online shoppers prefer to buy products with information in their own language, while 40% say they won’t buy from websites in other languages at all.
Shopify’s own data points in the same direction. The company reports that around 30% of visitors to an online store come from an international market on average, and that showing shoppers a store translated into their language produced a 13% relative lift in conversion compared with showing the default-language version.
So, this isn’t really about translating your store just for the sake of having a few extra languages in the menu. If people from other countries are already finding you, giving them a storefront they can comfortably understand can make a very real difference.
The good news is that Shopify already gives you a decent multilingual foundation. It supports multiple storefront languages and offers its own free Translate & Adapt app, which may be all you need for a small store with fairly simple requirements.
Once your store gets bigger, though, things can become a little more hands-on. If you want to translate several languages automatically, keep new products synchronized, control important terminology, and avoid constantly checking for untranslated content, I’d look at a more dedicated solution.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through what actually needs to be translated on a Shopify store, where Shopify’s native tools work well, where you may start running into limitations, and how TranslatePress can help you manage the whole thing without turning translation into another full-time job.
Quick Answer: To translate Shopify effectively, you need to translate more than product descriptions. A complete multilingual setup should cover products, collections, navigation, theme content, notifications, SEO information, and the customer journey through checkout. TranslatePress can automatically translate your Shopify content, keep translations synchronized as the store changes, and let you manually refine important wording before publishing each language.
What Do You Actually Need to Translate on a Shopify Store?
When people first think about translating Shopify, product titles and descriptions are usually the obvious starting point. And that makes sense; they’re where most of the selling happens. But they’re definitely not the whole job.
Think about the last time you shopped on a website in another language. Even if the product page itself was translated perfectly, an English-only menu, shipping policy, cart message, or order confirmation would probably make the experience feel a little unfinished.
That’s why I’d think about Shopify store translation as a complete customer journey rather than a list of individual pages.
Ideally, the experience should feel coherent from the moment someone lands on your store until after their order has been placed.
Here are the main areas I’d make sure to cover.
Product Titles, Descriptions, and Product Information
Start with the obvious one: your products.
For each target language, shoppers should be able to understand the product name, description, features, specifications, and any other information they need to make a buying decision.
This is also one of the areas where I’d spend a little more time reviewing the final translations.
An awkward sentence in a blog post probably isn’t going to cost you a sale. An unclear size, material, compatibility requirement, or product benefit potentially could.
And if your catalog uses the same product terminology again and again, I’d decide early on how those terms should be translated. It’ll save you a lot of cleanup later, and we’ll look at exactly how to do that with a glossary further down.
Collection Pages
Collections are another important part of Shopify store translation because they help shoppers understand how your catalog is organized.
That includes collection:
- Names;
- Descriptions;
- Headings;
- Promotional copy;
- SEO information.
Again, I’d look at this from the customer’s perspective.
If someone lands on a translated product page and then clicks into a collection with a title they don’t understand, you’ve introduced friction into what should have been a pretty simple shopping journey.
Navigation Menus and Theme Content
Your navigation should be translated too. That includes obvious menu items such as Shop, About, or Contact, but also all the smaller strings spread throughout your theme.
Depending on your Shopify setup, you may have translatable content in:
- Headers;
- Footers;
- Buttons;
- Cart drawers;
- Promotional sections;
- Account-related elements.
These strings are easy to overlook because they don’t belong to one particular product or page. I’d make a point of checking them before publishing a new language, especially anything that appears globally across the store.
Pages, Blog Posts, and Store Policies
Your supporting content matters too.
That can include:
- About pages;
- Contact pages;
- Shipping information;
- FAQs;
- Size guides;
- Blog posts.
Policies deserve a little more care.
Shopify notes that its Translate & Adapt app does not automatically translate policies, so those need to be handled manually. Shopify also recommends considering professional review for legal and policy content.
I’d follow the same general rule no matter which translation tool you use. Automatic translation is great for handling volume, but legal wording is one of the places where an extra human check is worth the effort. TranslatePress for Shopify makes this problem go away by handling the policy pages translations automatically, and then giving you the option to review them.
Checkout Content
A multilingual storefront shouldn’t suddenly switch languages the moment a customer is ready to pay.
Fortunately, Shopify handles the core checkout translation itself. When someone browses your store in a published language, checkout can display in that same language, with Shopify providing professional default translations for dozens of supported languages.
This works a little differently from translating the rest of your storefront because checkout is controlled by Shopify rather than your translation app.
My recommendation is simple: test the full checkout journey in every language before you launch it.
Pay particular attention to any custom checkout wording, shipping and payment information, or text you’ve modified from Shopify’s default version.
Email Notifications
The multilingual experience doesn’t stop once someone clicks Pay.
Order confirmations, shipping updates, and other transactional emails should ideally arrive in the same language the customer used while shopping.
Shopify supports localized email notifications and can automatically send a translated version when one is available for the language used for the order.
The TranslatePress for Shopify app also includes notifications among the content it can translate, which helps you keep the post-purchase experience aligned with the storefront.
It’s a small detail, but it makes the whole experience feel much more complete.
SEO Titles, Descriptions, URLs, and Image Alt Text
Finally, don’t forget about the content customers may see before they ever land on your store.
A proper multilingual Shopify setup should also account for SEO elements such as:
- SEO titles;
- Meta descriptions;
- Localized URLs;
- Image alt text.
Shopify creates unique URLs for published languages and automatically adds hreflang annotations and includes those language versions in its sitemaps.
Translated URL handles are also supported, although structural parts of Shopify URLs such as /products/ stay the same.
That’s important because multilingual SEO isn’t just about translating the visible page. You want search engines to understand that there’s a separate French, German, Spanish, or Italian version and show the right one to the right searcher.
Can You Translate Shopify With Shopify Translate & Adapt?
Yes. And to give Shopify credit, its native multilingual setup is a pretty good starting point.
Every Shopify subscription except Lite can support up to 20 storefront languages from a single store. You can add translations using CSV files, Shopify’s own Translate & Adapt app, or a compatible third-party translation app.
For a smaller store, I’d absolutely consider Translate & Adapt before assuming you need anything more complicated.
It’s free, lets you edit translations manually, can automatically translate up to two languages, supports translated URL handles, and even lets you create market-specific content adaptations.
That’s a solid feature set. The important thing is knowing where the limitations start to matter for your store. Here are the ones I’d pay most attention to.
Automatic Translation Is Limited to Two Languages
Shopify Translate & Adapt can automatically translate a maximum of two languages.
You can still add manual translations for other languages, but if you want automatic translation for a larger multilingual Shopify store, you’ll need another solution.
For a store expanding into just one or two markets, this may never become a problem.
But if you already know you want French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and several other languages, it’s something I’d take into account before committing to a workflow.
New Content Needs Another Automatic Translation Run
This is probably the limitation I’d think about most carefully if your store changes often.
When you add a new product or update existing content, Shopify Translate & Adapt doesn’t automatically translate that new content for you. You need to go back into the app and run Auto-translate again for each language.
For a small catalog that changes once every few months? Probably not a big deal.
But if you’re adding new products every week, changing seasonal promotions, publishing content, or regularly updating descriptions, it becomes another little task you have to remember every single time.
Personally, I’d much rather have those updates picked up automatically, especially once several languages are involved.
Some Content Isn’t Supported
Shopify also documents several content types that Translate & Adapt can’t translate, including collection filters, Shopify Forms content, manual payment-method instructions, product images, tags, and some third-party app content.
Again, this doesn’t make Translate & Adapt a bad solution. It just means I’d look at the actual content on your store before assuming one app will automatically cover every single string.
For a straightforward store with one or two additional languages, Shopify’s native setup might be all you need.
I’d start looking beyond it when translation becomes something you have to actively manage: several languages, a frequently changing catalog, important brand terminology, or lots of content that needs to stay synchronized.
That’s where TranslatePress becomes a more viable option.
How to Translate Shopify With TranslatePress
The workflow TranslatePress uses for Shopify is also the one I generally prefer for ecommerce translation:
Let AI handle the repetitive first pass, then spend your own time on the content where human judgment actually adds something.
There’s rarely much value in manually translating the same straightforward product fields hundreds of times. I’d rather recommend automating that part and focusing my attention on product messaging, brand terminology, best-selling pages, and anything else that directly affects the customer experience.
TranslatePress can automatically translate products, collections, pages, blog posts, theme text, notifications, and image alt text. It works with Shopify’s native multilingual system too, so translated content is served through Shopify’s existing localized URLs, such as /fr for French.
Here’s what the workflow looks like in practice.
TranslatePress for Shopify
Step 1: Install and Open TranslatePress in Shopify
First things first, install the official TranslatePress for Shopify app. You can get the free app here.
After installing TranslatePress, you can open it from your Shopify admin.
Go to: Settings → Apps → TranslatePress → Open app.
The TranslatePress dashboard gives you a quick overview of things like:
- Your current plan and available AI words;
- Your default and translation languages;
- The amount of translatable content detected;
- Your most recent content scan;
- Activity logs;
- Language-switcher settings.
I like having this overview because it gives you a sense of the translation project before you start working through individual products.
Step 2: Add the Languages You Want to Translate Into
From the dashboard, click Add language.
Search for the language you want, add it, and repeat the process for any other target languages.
TranslatePress will then scan your store and show translation progress for each language.
One thing I wouldn’t do is add every language you can think of simply because the option is there.
I’d start with the markets where you already see traffic, sales, customer enquiries, or a realistic opportunity to grow.
It’s much easier to launch two or three language versions that you’ve actually reviewed than ten languages that technically exist but haven’t had any attention since you clicked Translate.
You can always add more once the first markets are working well.
Step 3: Turn On Automatic Translation
Next, enable Auto for each language you want TranslatePress to translate automatically.
You can also choose which types of content should be included.
TranslatePress then translates eligible fields and automatically re-translates content when the original changes.
Theme and Settings strings are turned off by default because Shopify already localizes many of them, but you can include them if your store needs it.
This automatic synchronization is one of the features I find particularly useful for ecommerce sites because store content rarely stays still.
Say you tweak a product description next month. Ideally, you shouldn’t need a separate checklist reminding you to update French, Spanish, and German afterward.
TranslatePress can pick up those source-content changes and update the automatic translations for you, which removes one of those small repetitive jobs that becomes surprisingly annoying once your store grows.
Step 4: Review and Manually Edit Important Translations
Automatic translation should save you from translating everything by hand. It shouldn’t stop you from changing anything.
I’d think of the automatic version as your starting point rather than something you have to accept as-is.
To refine a translation, select Translate next to the relevant language, open a content type such as Products, and choose the item you want to review.
You’ll see the original content alongside the translated version, and you can manually change the target-language text.
For your best-selling products, homepage messaging, important calls to action, or anything where the exact wording really matters, it’s worth giving the translation a quick human review.
One feature I particularly like here is the option to disable Auto-translate this string for an individual field.
So, if you’ve spent time getting a product headline or description exactly right, you can essentially tell TranslatePress to “leave this one alone”.
The rest of the store can continue updating automatically without overwriting the translation you’ve already perfected.
For me, that’s a much more practical balance than choosing between a completely automatic workflow and translating the entire store manually.
Step 5: Translate Image Alt Text
Product images are obviously important in ecommerce, but there’s also text attached to those images that shoppers may never see directly. TranslatePress can translate image alt text separately for every language.
You can leave it on automatic translation or manually edit the alt text for individual product images.
This can be useful both for accessibility and for making image-related SEO information more relevant to each audience.
Step 6: Use a Glossary to Keep Product Terminology Consistent
This is one of those features that might sound a little technical at first, but it solves a very normal ecommerce problem.
Your automatic translation says “subscription” one way on a product page, another way in the FAQ, and something slightly different again somewhere else.
Or maybe your product name happens to be a normal dictionary word, and the translation engine helpfully translates the brand name you wanted to keep exactly as it was.
That’s what a translation glossary helps you avoid.
A glossary is simply a list of important words and phrases together with instructions for how they should be translated, or whether they should be translated at all.
I’d use it for terminology where consistency really matters, such as:
- Brand and product names;
- Product collections;
- Subscription or membership terminology;
- Proprietary materials and technologies;
- Industry-specific terms;
- Phrases with several possible translations.
You don’t need to put every word in your catalog into a glossary. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend it.
Start with the terminology customers see repeatedly or the words where a wrong translation would cause confusion.
With TranslatePress, you can add a term to the Glossary and either choose Keep original or provide the exact translation you want for each language. Those rules are then applied to new automatic translations.
The Glossary is available on the Starter, Business, and Pro Shopify plans.
For terminology that has already been translated, TranslatePress also includes Search & Replace on those plans. That lets you find existing wording across your translations, preview the matches, and replace it in bulk.
The two tools are useful for slightly different jobs:
- Glossary: controls how future automatic translations should handle a term;
- Search & Replace: fixes translations that already exist.
One thing I’d keep in mind is that Shopify handles its own core checkout translation.
So, I wouldn’t assume that a TranslatePress glossary rule automatically controls every Shopify checkout label. Review the checkout separately and make sure the terminology still feels consistent with the rest of your storefront.
Step 7: Publish Your Languages
Once you’re happy with a language, click Publish.
Published languages also appear under Shopify’s Settings → Languages and become available on the storefront.
I’d keep a new language unpublished while you do your first quality check.
That gives you time to review important products, navigation, SEO content, and the buying journey before customers start seeing an unfinished version.
Step 8: Add a Language Switcher to Your Store
A language switcher is simply the control visitors use to move between the different language versions of your store.
It sounds like a small part of the setup, but I wouldn’t treat it as an afterthought.
You can spend all the time in the world creating a great French version of your store, but it’s not particularly useful if French-speaking visitors can’t figure out how to reach it.
TranslatePress gives you two options:
- A Floating Switcher, which stays visible in a corner of the storefront;
- An Inline Switcher, which you can add as a theme block.
You can configure details such as position, background, text and border colors, display style, flag style, language names, and flag placement from Shopify’s Theme Editor.
Personally, I prefer displaying the actual language name rather than relying on a flag by itself.
Flags represent countries, not languages. Spanish, French, English, German, and Portuguese are all spoken in more than one country, so labels such as Español and Français leave much less room for confusion.
As for placement, keep it somewhere obvious. The header is usually a safe choice. If your theme doesn’t give you a good permanent spot, the floating switcher can be an easy alternative.
We wrote a more in-depth guide on this matter, so if you want to see all of the available customization options, feel free to check this guide on adding a language switcher to Shopify.
The switcher doesn’t appear during checkout because Shopify handles checkout localization itself.
How Does Multilingual SEO Work on Shopify?
Getting the storefront translated is only half the job if you also want people to discover those translations through Google.
That’s where multilingual SEO comes in.
In simple terms, it means giving each language version of your store the signals and translated content search engines need to understand and rank it for searches in that language.
This is also why I wouldn’t consider browser translation a replacement for a proper multilingual store.
You want French shoppers to be able to find an actual French version of your product in search results—not arrive on an English page and hope their browser offers to translate it.
Fortunately, Shopify handles quite a bit of the technical groundwork for you.
When you publish additional languages, Shopify creates language-specific URLs such as:
example.com/fr
example.com/de
It also automatically adds hreflang tags and includes published language versions in its sitemaps.
TranslatePress uses these native Shopify URLs rather than creating a separate translation layer on top of the storefront.
All TranslatePress Shopify plans also include multilingual SEO.
Translate SEO Content, Not Just Product Copy
Your target-language customers may first encounter your store in Google, not on your homepage.
That means you should also review the translated:
- Page and product titles;
- Meta descriptions;
- URL handles;
- Image alt text.
Shopify supports translated URL handles, although fixed URL components such as /products/ remain the same across languages.
I’d also avoid assuming that the best English keyword has a direct equivalent in another language.
Search behavior changes between markets. People may use a completely different expression to describe the same product, even if the literal translation is technically correct.
For your highest-value products and collections, I think a little local keyword research before you finalize SEO titles and descriptions is well worth the extra time.
How Do You Make a Multilingual Shopify Store Feel Trustworthy?
Getting every string translated is one thing.
Making the translated store feel like it was actually created for that audience is another.
And this is where I think a little human attention goes a long way.
You don’t need to manually rewrite thousands of automatically translated strings. I’d focus instead on the details customers are most likely to notice—the words you use for products, your biggest sales pages, the buying journey, and anything that affects whether someone feels comfortable handing over their payment details.
Here are a few areas I’d prioritize.
Keep Important Product Terminology Consistent
If a feature is called one thing on the product page and something completely different in the FAQ, cart, or customer email, people may wonder whether those words refer to the same thing.
Use your glossary for brand names, product families, technical terminology, recurring features, subscription language, and other high-impact phrases.
I’d particularly prioritize terms that customers see several times before making a purchase.
Once shoppers learn what you call something, they shouldn’t have to work out whether a second name means the same thing later.
Review Your Highest-Impact Pages Manually
You probably don’t need to manually rewrite every automatic translation, and I wouldn’t try.
Instead, spend that time where it can actually make a difference.
I’d start with:
- Homepage;
- Best-selling products;
- Main collections;
- Navigation;
- Cart;
- Checkout;
- Returns and shipping information;
- Main marketing landing pages;
- Transactional emails.
These are the places customers are most likely to notice awkward wording and, more importantly, the places where unclear language can get in the way of a purchase.
Once those are in good shape, you can work your way through lower-priority content over time.
Don’t Confuse Translation With Localization
Translation converts your text into another language.
Localization goes a step further and adapts the wider shopping experience to the expectations of a particular market.
That can include:
- Currency;
- Sizing;
- Measurements;
- Dates;
- Payment methods;
- Shipping expectations;
- Imagery;
- Promotional references;
- Product availability;
- Legal requirements.
I wouldn’t necessarily try to localize every possible detail before publishing your first translation.
But as a market becomes more important to your business, these details are worth looking at. The closer the experience matches what customers in that region expect, the less the store feels like an international version bolted onto the original.
Check the Store on Mobile
Translations can be significantly longer or shorter than the original text.
A button that looks perfect in English might suddenly wrap onto two lines in German. A product card may become taller. Navigation labels can stop fitting neatly in the available space.
Before publishing, I’d open your most important pages on both desktop and mobile and switch through every language.
It’s a quick check, but it can catch a surprising number of problems.
Frequently Asked Questions About Translating Shopify
Does Shopify Support Multiple Languages?
Yes.
Shopify supports up to 20 languages from a single store on eligible Shopify subscriptions.
You can provide those translations using Shopify Translate & Adapt, a compatible app such as TranslatePress for Shopify, or imported translation files.
Does Shopify Automatically Translate Your Store?
Not just because you add another language. You still need to provide the translations using an app or import them yourself.
Shopify Translate & Adapt can automatically translate up to two languages. TranslatePress also supports automatic translation, with the number of automatically translated languages and included AI words depending on your TranslatePress plan.
Can You Translate a Shopify Store for Free?
Yes, depending on how large your store is and what you need.
Shopify Translate & Adapt is free and can automatically translate up to two languages.
TranslatePress for Shopify also has a Free plan, which currently includes one auto-translated language, 5,000 AI-translated words per month, unlimited manual translation, a customizable language switcher, multilingual SEO, and automatic synchronization for new translations.
For a smaller store, that can be enough to test the workflow before you move to a larger plan.
Can You Translate Shopify Checkout?
Yes, but the core checkout translation is handled by Shopify.
When a customer shops in a published language, Shopify can display checkout in that language using its own localized checkout strings.
That’s also why the TranslatePress storefront language switcher doesn’t appear on the checkout page.
If you’ve customized checkout wording, I’d test it separately in every important language before considering the setup finished.
Does Translating a Shopify Store Help With SEO?
It can.
A properly configured multilingual Shopify store gives each published language its own URL and allows search engines to index the translated versions separately.
Shopify automatically adds hreflang annotations and includes published languages in its sitemaps.
For the best results, I’d also translate and optimize SEO titles, meta descriptions, URL handles, and other searchable content for the target market rather than translating keywords word for word.
Do You Need a Language Switcher on Shopify?
If you offer multiple languages, I strongly recommend one.
Shopify can also redirect visitors based on their browser language when the corresponding language has been translated, assigned to the relevant market, and published.
Even then, visitors should still have an obvious way to switch languages themselves.
People travel, use devices configured in another language, or simply prefer a language different from the one Shopify detects.
Is Browser Translation Enough for a Shopify Store?
I wouldn’t rely on it if international customers are an important part of your growth strategy.
Browser translation is useful when someone just needs to understand a page quickly.
But you don’t control the wording or terminology, and it doesn’t replace a properly translated and indexable version of your store.
A dedicated multilingual setup gives you control over the final content and allows search engines to discover each language version separately.
Does TranslatePress Automatically Update Shopify Translations When Products Change?
Yes, for content included in automatic translation.
TranslatePress for Shopify scans eligible content and can re-translate it when the source changes.
You can also disable automatic translation on individual strings that you’ve manually edited and want to preserve.
For an active store where products, collections, promotions, and content change regularly, I think this is one of the more useful parts of the workflow.
Build a Multilingual Shopify Store That Feels Complete
If there’s one thing I’d take away from this guide, it’s that learning how to translate Shopify properly isn’t really about translating one difficult piece of content.
It’s about making sure all the smaller pieces feel like they belong together.
Your product descriptions matter, of course. But so do the collection pages people browse next, the menu they use to get around, the language switcher, the shipping information they read before ordering, the checkout they use to pay, and the email that lands in their inbox afterward.
The good news is that Shopify already gives you a strong foundation for all of this. You get localized URLs, checkout translations, hreflang implementation, multilingual sitemaps, and the free Translate & Adapt app.
And I wouldn’t dismiss that native setup.
If you run a relatively simple store and only need one or two additional languages, I’d probably start there and see whether it covers your needs. Where I’d consider TranslatePress is when the store starts becoming more dynamic.
Maybe you’re adding products constantly. Maybe you want more languages. Maybe you’ve already spent too much time fixing the same product terminology in different places. Or maybe you simply don’t want “remember to translate everything again” added to the checklist every time you update the store.
In those situations, being able to automatically translate new and updated content, protect the translations you’ve manually perfected, manage terminology through a glossary, and still step in whenever something needs your attention makes the workflow much easier to live with.
That’s ultimately the balance I’d aim for.
Let automatic translation take care of the repetitive work, then use your own time where it matters most: making sure the products, messaging, and shopping experience feel right for the people you’re trying to reach.
You don’t need every sentence to sound like it was translated by hand. You just need your customers to feel like the store was made with them in mind.
