Translating a store involves more than just running a machine translation. This guide covers what to keep in mind throughout the process — from planning your workflow to making informed decisions about what to translate and what to skip.

A Typical Translation Workflow

You are always in full control of your translations. Every translation is initiated by you — either by clicking the machine translation button on individual fields, or by running a Bulk Translation — and can be edited at any time.

Key Terms

• Base Language — The original language of your store content, managed in your Shopify admin. Before you start translating, make sure all your original content in Shopify is in one language.
• Translation Language — A language you translate your content into, managed in langify. Langify adds your translations on top of the base language content; it does not change or replace it.
• Bulk Translation — Langify's tool for machine-translating most of your store content in one go, rather than translating field by field. It has limitations, so check them before you start — see How to bulk-translate your store with langify for details. After running a Bulk Translation, go through the content that has not been covered and add your own translations or apply machine translations.
• Custom Content — Langify's feature for adding translations to text that isn't part of your theme or product data, such as text from third-party apps. See Custom Content feature for details.

Know What to Translate — and What Not To

You will most likely never reach 100% translation coverage — and that is fine. Your store contains fields that are best left untranslated. The most common cases are:

• Metafields — Metafields may belong to third-party apps and contain settings rather than customer-facing text. Since langify has no way of knowing whether a metafield belongs to a third-party app, all metafields are excluded from the Bulk Translation. Translating them without care can break app functionality.
  Visit our Metafield Translations guide for more information.
• The Theme section — The Theme section can contain links or metafield references that should remain untranslated. Leave the translation field empty for these cases — otherwise you will need to manually update the translation whenever you change the original content. langify's machine translation will skip these fields automatically.

Theme and App Compatibility

Shopify's translation system is not perfect — with so many different themes and apps available, each with their own implementation, translation issues can occur that are specific to your store's setup. These can include megamenus and variant images or swatches not displaying correctly in translated languages. In most cases, these issues can be sorted out. If you run into anything, don't hesitate to reach out to us at support@langify-app.com.

Your Theme

Use a theme that is up to date, or at least optimized for Shopify's native translation system. Most recent themes in the Shopify Theme Store meet this requirement. If your theme is heavily customized or a few years old, check with the theme's support team whether your version is compatible.

Third-Party Apps

Most third-party app texts can be translated using langify's Custom Content feature. Check our app list for guides on selected apps and how to translate them.

If you are evaluating a new app, it is worth checking with the app's support team what the recommended translation approach is. Some apps manage their own translation system, while others have integrated with Shopify's native translation system — meaning their texts will appear in langify out of the box.

Back Up Your Translations Regularly

It is a good habit to export your translations from time to time, so you can restore them if something goes wrong.

Shopify export: Export translations for your entire store in one go at Shopify > Settings > Languages.

Langify export: Use langify's export to back up your Custom Content translations, which the Shopify export does not cover. See our Export Translations guide for details.

How Visitors Interact With Your Translations

Once your translations are live, there are a few options worth considering for how visitors interact with them.

Langify's Switcher Configurator lets you set up a language switcher, and optionally a country and currency switcher, to give your international visitors a consistent experience. If your theme already includes a native language switcher, that works too — you can simply hide the langify switcher.

You can also enable automatic redirects based on your visitor's browser language, or show a language recommendation banner instead. The banner is often the friendlier option — it suggests a language without forcing a redirect, leaving the choice with the visitor. Both options are available in the Language Detection & Recommendation settings.

Ready to get started? Follow our First Steps guide to set up your first language and start translating.