Languages and Translations

Running a shop in more than one language, what gets translated, and what you have to write yourself.

Settings, Languages adds languages, and Settings, Translations manages the wording.

Two Different Things Get Translated

The shop's own words are the buttons, headings and messages: Add to Basket, Checkout, Your order has been placed. These come with the platform and already exist in the languages it supports.

Your words are your product names, descriptions, categories and pages. Nobody can translate those for you, and an untranslated product in a translated shop is the obvious gap a visitor notices first.

Adding a Language

Add it, and decide whether it is the default. Shoppers switch between them with a selector your theme places in the header.

Translating Your Content

Products, categories and pages each hold a version per language. Work through the ones that matter rather than the whole catalogue: your most-sold hundred products will cover most of what anybody looks at.

Overriding the Platform's Words

Settings, Translation Overrides changes a word the platform supplies. That is for a shop whose trade uses a different term, or where the standard wording is wrong for your market.

Change as few as possible. Every override is one you maintain forever and one that will not be updated when the original is improved.

Currency Is Separate

A language is not a currency. A shop can be read in French and priced in dollars, which is often correct.

Currencies are under Settings, Currencies, and whether prices convert or are set per market is a separate decision covered there.

Right to Left

Languages written right to left are supported, and your theme has to handle them. Check a product page, the basket and the checkout specifically, because that is where layouts built left to right usually break.

Before You Offer One

Translate, in this order: the checkout, the delivery and returns pages, your top products, your main categories. A shopper who can read the checkout and the returns policy can buy. One who can read the homepage and nothing else cannot.