Get default (untranslated) value of product field in liquid

Retired Boards Appdev Store Design
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Topic summary

A developer needs to access the untranslated (default) value of product fields in Liquid code. Their store previously used product type as a condition for displaying features, but after adding translations, the Liquid templates now return translated values instead of the original ones.

Current workarounds discussed:

  • Fetching the product JSON via JavaScript in the store’s base language to retrieve default values
  • Using metaobject references instead of translatable fields, since metaobject references aren’t translatable
  • Instructing teams to avoid translating specific fields

Key limitation: Unlike the Shopify API where translations are separate entities, Liquid templates lack a filter or method to access base/untranslated values. The original poster prefers a Liquid-based solution rather than client-side JavaScript fetching.

Status: The issue remains unresolved with no native Liquid solution available. Participants agree a filter option for accessing default values would be beneficial.

Summarized with AI on October 25. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hi,

I need to get the untranslated value of the product type in the liquid code. Before translating our store in other languages, we were using the product type as a condition of some of the features some of our product pages would display, which was working fine and would prevent us from relying too much on tags and metafields, which would clutter the interface at some point.

Is there a way to get the original, default value of a product field ? In the API, translations are their very own things, and while I get that in the theme you want a translated content by default, it seems very unpractical to me that we don’t have a filter or another mean to get the base value.

2

I had to do a tricky way to get store default value of product through javascript fetching .json of store base language

{% assign full_url = request.origin | append: request.path | append: ‘.json?country=CH’ %}

3

Hi Kazi,

Thank you for your answer. It could be a nice solution when you have a JS-first storefront, but ours is mainly liquid-generated and we want to keep it this way for now. Fetching the product informations one more time in the browser should not have to be done just to be able to access base values…

4

A filter option is needed to get store default product values

5

I have had the same problem when using an enum metafield (“single line text” with “limit to preset choices”) since the translations aren’t limited to preset choices.
The best alternative (although i didn’t implement it myself since its a bit overkill for my use case) is to instead use a metafield of type “metaobject reference”. Since then you can limit the choice for all languages (since metaobject references aren’t translatable). And the actual translations of the labels are easier to find since it’s just on the metaobjects.

Though, again, it might be a bit overkill, and is probably just easier to tell your team to not translate that field.