Shopify Translate & Adapt: A Complete Guide

Shopify Translate & Adapt is Shopify's native translation tool, available free to all merchants. It allows you to translate your store content — product titles, descriptions, page content, navigation labels, and checkout text — into any of Shopify's supported languages, and to adapt content per market without requiring a paid third-party translation app.

What Translate & Adapt Covers

• Product titles, descriptions, and metafields
• Collection titles and descriptions
• Page and blog post content
• Navigation menus and link labels
• Checkout content (labels, messaging)
• Email notification templates
• Theme section content and settings
• Metaobject entries

Setting Up Your First Language

1. 1Navigate to Settings > Languages in your Shopify admin
2. 2Add a new language from the supported list
3. 3Go to the Translate & Adapt app (install free from the App Store if not already present)
4. 4Select the source and target language pair
5. 5Use auto-translate to generate AI translations as a starting point
6. 6Review and refine auto-translated content before publishing
7. 7Assign the language to the relevant Shopify Market

Auto-Translate: Useful Starting Point, Not Final Product

Translate & Adapt includes an AI auto-translate feature powered by DeepL. For product descriptions and basic content, the quality is generally good. However, auto-translation should always be reviewed by a native speaker before publishing, particularly for brand tone, idioms, and any SEO-targeted content where precise keyword placement matters.

The 'Adapt' Component: Market-Specific Content

Beyond translation, Translate & Adapt allows you to adapt content for specific markets without translating it. For example, you might adapt your homepage hero banner copy for the US market — keeping it in English but adjusting the messaging, product references, or offers — while maintaining different content for the UK market. This is distinct from translation and is unique to the Adapt feature.

SEO Considerations for Translated Content

Translated content creates localised URLs (e.g., /de/products/product-name) and hreflang tags automatically when configured correctly with Shopify Markets. Ensure your translated product descriptions include locally-relevant keywords — a German customer searches differently to a UK customer, and auto-translations rarely optimise for local search intent.

Ongoing Translation Management

Every time you add new products, create new pages, or update your theme content, you need to update translations. Build a process for flagging new content that requires translation and assign ownership to ensure translations don't fall behind your primary language content. Outdated or missing translations create poor experiences for international customers.

“Translation quality is brand quality in international markets. Invest in professional review of auto-translated content — a poor translation signals to customers that you don't really care about serving their market.”