Can I add a second language to my basic Shopify plan?

m3n
Visitor
1 0 0

Hello,

 

I am trying to have a better understanding of how content is translated in Shopify. Please correct my if I am wrong as this is why I am posting this.

 

There are three places to reach content that can be translated.

  1. Settings -> Languages. Here we can export a csv file, but I noticed the theme assets are not exported, why?
  2. Translate & Adapt App. This has it all (I guess 🙂 ), but what is annoying me is that I can't export all fields from there.
  3. Theme Code -> Locales File. I have copied the English json file as well as the Arabic json file (after auto translating using translate and adapt app). I noticed after parsing and converting to a 2D array, the English file had 300 fields in it and the Arabic file had 1536 fields in it!!! This means some field are available in English, but are not showing in the json file. How can I get those?!

Sincerely,

 

Maan Dawod

Replies 4 (4)

richbrown_staff
Shopify Staff
632 91 153

Hey Maan,

 

We've been in touch over email but just sharing the response for anyone else looking:

 

some explanations to why there are more fields in the arabic json file. Basically these locale json files contain "overrides" or customizations to Shopify's default content. If a theme needs a field that is not offered by default Shopify content, or if a theme wants to customize the content of a field, these files can be used to do that. For Arabic, Shopify has no default content at all, so every possible field needs to be overridden through the ar.json file. For English, Shopify already offers a good amount of basic default content, and only a handful of fields need customization in this case. 
 
As an example, for the field "checkout.general.page_title", Shopify already has the default content of "Checkout" for English, and no customization is required for this theme, so we don't see it in en.default.json. On the other hand, we have no default content for Arabic at all, so this field was translated by the app and its translation is recorded in ar.json as "الدفع". 
 
I hope this explains better the difference in the amount of fields between the en.default.json and the ar.json file
 
Thanks,
 
Rich

To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Community Blog.

magic777
Visitor
2 0 0

great news, I will definitely use this resource

John777R
Visitor
3 0 0

great news, I will definitely use this resource. But I also sometimes fail to translate all the fields, so I'll settle for help. Especially when you have to translate English to Uzbek. After all, this is a particularly serious case, so help may be appropriate in such cases 

magic777
Visitor
2 0 0

Hello, you can use this information in the future. I also had to translatetranslate english to uzbek  But it didn't work out as well as it could be imagined. Therefore, this resource will be useful to me. If I just go to another country, this will be a great find