How languages work in Shopify
Shopify works with one default language and one or more additional languages, which you add and publish in Settings > Languages. Everything lives in a single store: products, inventory and orders are the same, and what changes is the text each visitor sees.
Each published language has its own URLs. By default Shopify uses subfolders, such as /ca/ for Catalan or /en/ for English, on the same domain. You can also assign different domains or subdomains per market if your strategy calls for it. The number of available languages depends on your plan, so check the current documentation if you plan to work with many.
Translate & Adapt and other translation apps
Translate & Adapt is Shopify's free app for managing translations. It lets you translate products, collections, pages, blog posts, menus, metafields, metaobjects and theme text, either by hand or with machine translation. Free machine translation has limits on languages and volume, so review them on the app listing.
Besides translating, the app lets you adapt content to a specific market: for example, using different English copy for the United Kingdom and the United States. If you need workflows with external translators, glossaries or translation memory, there are more complete third-party apps that work on top of the same native Shopify translations.
Catalan, English and translation quality
Shopify supports Catalan as a store language, just like English, French or Basque. For shoppers in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands or the Valencia region, a well-made Catalan version feels closer to home and can rank for searches your competitors ignore.
Machine translation is a good starting point, but it is not enough on the pages that sell. At a minimum, review product titles and descriptions, main collections, the home page, cart text and SEO titles by hand. A translation error on a product page signals carelessness right where the customer makes the decision.
- Product pages and main collections
- SEO titles and meta descriptions in each language
- Menus, buttons and fixed theme text
- Legal notices, shipping and returns
- Order notification emails
Markets: language, currency and domain by country
Shopify Markets lets you group countries into markets and decide, for each one, which languages are published, which currency is charged and which domain or subfolder serves it. That way you can offer Spanish and Catalan in Spain and English in the rest of Europe, for example, from the same store.
If you only sell in Spain and simply want to offer several languages, you do not need to deal with multiple markets: publishing the languages in the Spanish market is enough. If you also sell abroad, Markets is the piece that organizes everything else.
Multilingual SEO and hreflang
Hreflang tags tell Google which version of each page corresponds to each language and region, so it shows the right one in each search. Shopify generates them automatically for published languages and markets, and it also includes the alternate URLs in the sitemap. You do not need to add them to the theme by hand; in fact, doing so can create conflicting duplicates.
What you do need to check is that each version has properly translated content. An English version with half the product pages still in Spanish sends mixed signals. Translate URL handles if you want them readable in each language, and confirm in Search Console that Google indexes each version correctly.
Workflow for launching a new language
Publishing a half-translated language is worse than not publishing it, because Google and customers see an incomplete version. That is why you should prepare the language without publishing it, translate and review, and only publish when it is ready. Shopify supports this: a language that is added but not published does not appear in the store or the sitemap.
An order that works well is to start with the structural pieces, such as menus, theme text and legal pages, continue with your best-selling collections and products, and finish with the rest of the catalog and the blog. If your catalog is large, prioritize by sales and traffic instead of trying to translate everything at once.
- Add the language in Settings > Languages without publishing it
- Translate theme text, menus and legal pages
- Translate and review priority products and collections
- Translate SEO titles, meta descriptions and handles
- Review order notifications and checkout text
- Publish the language and check the sitemap and Search Console
Language selector and theme details
The theme should include a visible language selector, usually in the header or footer. Online Store 2.0 themes tend to include one, but check how it looks on mobile and that it uses clear language names, such as Català or English, rather than flags alone.
If the theme has text hard-coded in the templates instead of using the locale files, that text will not show up in Translate & Adapt. It is a common issue in heavily modified themes, and the fix is to move those strings into the theme translations.
Also check images with embedded text, such as banners with a slogan written on the photo. They do not translate themselves: either upload one version per language or, better yet, put the text in the theme section over the image so it is translated like any other content.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a separate store for each language?
No. Shopify handles multiple languages in a single store, with the same catalog, inventory and orders. Separate stores only make sense in very specific cases of country-level operations.
Does Shopify add hreflang tags automatically?
Yes. For published languages and markets, Shopify generates hreflang tags and the alternate sitemap URLs without you having to touch the theme.
Can I translate order emails?
Yes. Notifications are sent in the language the customer bought in, and their text is translated in Translate & Adapt or by editing the templates per language.
Is machine translation enough?
It can work to get started, but we recommend reviewing your best-selling pages and every SEO title by hand. Copy quality affects both trust and rankings.