How to Translate Your Shopify Store to Multiple Languages (2026 Guide)

Selling to other countries is one of the fastest ways to grow a Shopify store. If your product pages and navigation are only in English, shoppers who prefer another language leave before they buy.

This guide covers the three ways to translate a Shopify store, what each one does and does not handle, and a step-by-step setup with Proxylang.

Why translate your Shopify store?

Most shoppers outside the English-speaking world prefer to buy in their own language. A store that only speaks English loses those sales in every other market.

Translation also opens search traffic in other languages. When your translated pages are indexed, shoppers in Japan, Germany, or Brazil can find your products through searches you are not competing for today.

Your options for translating a Shopify store

There are three approaches.

1. Shopify’s built-in translation (Translate & Adapt)

Shopify lets you publish up to 20 languages on Basic through Advanced plans, and 30 on Plus. The free Translate & Adapt app auto-translates up to two languages. Beyond two, you add translations by hand, import a CSV, or install a paid app.

Pros: Free. No third-party dependency. Shopify adds hreflang tags and includes every published language in your sitemap. Checkout and notification emails are translated by Shopify itself.

Cons: Only two languages get automatic translation. When you edit a product, its translations show as “Outdated” until you run the translation again. Text inside product images is not translated.

2. Shopify translation apps (Weglot, Langify, and others)

Third-party apps from the Shopify App Store translate your store automatically and add a language switcher.

Pros: Automatic translation. Language switcher included. Most handle SEO through Shopify’s own language system.

Cons: Most apps price by word count multiplied by number of languages, so cost rises as your catalog grows. Theme conflicts happen.

3. Proxylang

Proxylang works from a single script tag in your theme, with an optional Shopify Helper app for search engine indexing. The Helper is installed from your Proxylang dashboard.

Pros: Translated words are stored and never re-billed. New products are translated the first time a visitor views them. Text inside images can be translated. The same account translates sites on any platform, so if you ever move off Shopify your setup comes with you.

Cons: The script runs on your storefront only. Shopify’s checkout does not allow third-party scripts, so checkout stays in Shopify’s hands. Search engine indexing of translated pages needs the Shopify Helper app.

Step-by-step: translating your Shopify store with Proxylang

The whole process takes about five minutes.

Go to proxylang.dev/login and create a free account. Add your store’s domain. A custom domain (for example yourstore.com) or your .myshopify.com address both work.

Step 2: Paste the script tag into your theme

Copy the one-line script tag from your Proxylang dashboard.
In Shopify admin, open Online Store → Themes, click the ⋯ button on your current theme, then Edit code.
Open theme.liquid in the Layout folder.
Paste the script tag on the line just above </head> and click Save.

The language switcher appears on your storefront right away. The same steps are in the Shopify install guide.

Step 3: Choose your languages

Pick the languages you want to support. The free plan gives you one language and Lite gives you five. Start and every plan above it let you turn on all 68 at once, and you can add more later. Each language spends words from your allowance the first time a shopper opens a page in it.

Step 4: Add brand terms to the glossary

Open the Glossary in your dashboard. Add your brand name, product line names, and any term that should stay as-is or use a specific translation. A brand called “NordSkin” should stay “NordSkin” in Japanese, not become a literal translation.

Step 5: Install the Shopify Helper for search indexing

The script tag translates pages in the visitor’s browser. Search engine crawlers do not run that script, so they still see your original language. The Shopify Helper fixes this.

From the setup wizard, click Install Shopify Helper. Shopify asks you to authorize the app. Once installed, every translated page gets its own address:

yourstore.com/                          → English (original)
yourstore.com/apps/proxylang/ja/        → Japanese
yourstore.com/apps/proxylang/de/        → German

These pages are translated on the server, so crawlers get finished HTML. Proxylang adds hreflang tags for every language and generates a sitemap that lists the translated paths. No DNS change is needed.

Step 6: Preview and go live

Visit your store and click the language switcher. Check product names, prices, and the cart page in each language. If a translation needs a change, press Escape twice on your site to open the Live Editor, click the text, and edit it in place. Your edit is kept and never overwritten.

What gets translated

On your storefront, Proxylang translates:

Product titles and descriptions
Collection pages
Navigation menus and footer
Blog posts and pages
Cart page text
Page titles and meta descriptions
Image alt text
Content that loads after the page, such as reviews, pop-ups, and announcement bars

New products are translated the first time someone views them in another language. The result is stored, so the next visitor gets it from cache.

Checkout: Shopify serves checkout on its own pages and blocks third-party scripts there. To get a translated checkout, publish the language under Settings → Languages in Shopify admin. Shopify ships its own checkout translations for every language it supports.

Multilingual SEO for Shopify

Translation without indexing is half the job. A search engine has to find and index each translated page on its own.

With the Shopify Helper installed, each language gets a server-rendered page at yourstore.com/apps/proxylang/{lang}/. Proxylang adds hreflang tags that tell Google which language each page is in, and a sitemap that lists them. Your Japanese product pages can then rank on Google.co.jp on their own.

Without the Helper, translation still works for visitors, but search engines index the original language only.

Image translation for product photos

If your product images contain text, such as size charts, ingredient lists, or promotional banners, Proxylang can translate that too. There are three ways to pick which images to translate:

Live Editor. Press Escape twice on your site to open the editor, click Image Translation, and tap the images you want.
Paste image addresses on the Image Translations tab of your domain settings.
Tag the image in your theme code with the data-pl-translate-image attribute.

The translated image keeps the original fonts, colors, and layout as closely as the AI can manage. Review the result before you rely on it.

Image translation is on for every plan and runs on prepaid credits. One credit covers one image in one language. Images wider or taller than 2000px cost two. Credits come in packs of 10 for $5, 50 for $20, or 100 for $35, and stay valid for 12 months.

What about Shopify Markets?

Shopify Markets and Proxylang work together. Use Markets for currencies, duties, and tax by region. Use Proxylang for the language side: translation, glossary, image text, and indexed translated pages.

Pricing for Shopify stores

Proxylang counts words once. A product description translated today stays translated. It is never billed again, no matter how many people read it.

Each plan has a lifetime word allowance and a monthly page view limit:

Plan	Price	Words (lifetime)	Languages	Page views / month
Test Drive	Free	2,000	1	1,500
Lite	$15/mo	50,000	5	15,000
Start	$39/mo	200,000	All 68	50,000
Pro	$99/mo	1,000,000	All 68	150,000
Business	$399/mo	5,000,000	All 68	750,000
Global	$699/mo	20,000,000	All 68	Unlimited

A rough guide by catalog size:

Under 50 products: Start
50 to 500 products: Pro
500 to 5,000 products: Business
Larger catalogs or many markets: Global

Yearly billing gives you two months free. The free plan needs no credit card.

Getting started

Create a free account
Add your Shopify domain
Paste the script tag into theme.liquid
Choose your languages
Add your brand terms to the glossary
Install the Shopify Helper for search indexing

Your store will be translated within minutes. Start free and upgrade when you need more languages or words.

Translate your Shopify store free →

Competitor and platform information comes from public pricing pages, help documentation, and app listings, checked in September 2026. All product names and trademarks belong to their owners. Found something outdated? Let us know and we will correct it.