Translate option content
Translate your labels, option values, help text, and placeholders for each storefront language, by hand or with Auto-translate.
Option content is the text you wrote: labels, option values, help text, placeholders, and static content such as paragraphs and size charts. Each of these can be translated for each storefront language.
Before you start
Your storefront needs more than one language, configured in Shopify. The app reads the list from there.
Translating option content may not be available on all plans. If the Translations tab is unavailable, see Compare plans.
Translate the widget text for the store first. It is quicker, and it covers the messages that appear in every option set.
Steps
Translation is done per option set, on its own Translations tab beside Basic, Advanced, and Personalizer.
Auto-translate
Auto-translate fills in the untranslated fields of the language you are working on, so you review and correct rather than type everything. It is on the same screen as the fields themselves.
What it skips
Fields you have already translated
Auto-translate only fills empty fields
Fields that are too long
Reported as :count fields were skipped because they are too long to translate automatically. Translate those by hand
Condition values
Reported as :count condition values are left for you to translate by hand. These have to match your Shopify variant names exactly, so they are never guessed. See Variant conditions need translating too
Monthly AI credits
Auto-translate runs on a monthly credit allowance that comes with your plan.
Monthly AI credits: 12K / 300K
How much of this month's allowance you have used
This run will use about 4K credits
An estimate for the language you are about to translate, shown before you start
Monthly AI credits used up
The allowance is spent. Auto-translate is unavailable until it resets at the start of next month. Translating by hand still works
Credits are counted per run, not per language, so translating a short option set costs far less than a long one. The allowance is shared across your whole store, and the exact number depends on your plan — see Compare plans.
If it stops early
A translation is already running for this option set
Wait for the other run to finish. Only one run per option set at a time, even across browser tabs
Too many translation requests. Try again in :count seconds
Wait the number of seconds shown, then select Try again
Translation timed out
The fields already translated were kept. Select Try again to continue with the rest
Auto-translate is temporarily unavailable
A problem on the translation service. Try again later
Auto-translate failed
Select Try again. If it keeps happening, see Contact support
A run that stops part-way keeps everything it had already translated, and Try again picks up from what is still empty.
What can be translated
Option Label
Option Name — deliberately, so orders stay consistent
Option values
Prefix and suffix text
Help text, at option and value level
Option set names
Placeholder
Add-on product titles — translate those in Shopify
Static content: Heading, Paragraph, Pop-up modal, HTML, Size chart, Tabs
The globo-product-options tag and other internal values
Conditional logic values for Shopify variant conditions
Conditions that test your own option values — they compare the source value
Section titles
Two things to be aware of
Option Name stays in one language
The Name appears on the cart, the order, and your packing slips. It is intentionally not translatable, so your production team reads Engraving text regardless of the language the customer ordered in.
This is why a customer's cart can show English text on a translated storefront. See Label and Name.
Variant conditions need translating too
If you use conditions based on Shopify variants, the variant name you entered is stored for each language, because variant names are translated as well.
A rule that works on your English storefront does not run on your French storefront until the French variant name is entered too. These values appear in the Translations tab like any other field, labelled Condition 1, Condition 2, and so on, so they are listed with everything else rather than hidden inside the rule builder.
This is the most common cause of conditional logic not working on a translated storefront.
Conditions that test one of your own option values are not translated. They compare against the source value, so they keep working in every language.
Keeping translations in step
Add an option
Translate it in every language before going live
Add an option value
Same — an untranslated value shows in your primary language
Rename an option value
Update the translation, and check any conditional rule that referenced it
Change help text
Update every language, or the languages drift apart
Add a storefront language in Shopify
Go through every option set for the new language
Finish an option set completely in your primary language, then translate it in one pass. Translating while you build means repeating the work every time you change something.
Notes
Untranslated fields fall back to the source text rather than displaying blank, so a partially translated store still works.
Preview displays the option set in the selected language, which is the quickest way to check a translation in context.
Option values keep their character rules in every language. The characters
,:"'|are not allowed. See Working with option values.CSV export includes translations, so you can move a translated option set between stores. See Import and export.
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