Need to display Serbian in Latin script (Latinica) rather than default Cyrillic (Äirilica), and ideally have both scripts available. Renaming languages isnât supported, and changing the storeâs default language wonât convert contentâit only changes which language the system treats as the original.
Suggested workarounds:
Open issues and decisions:
Hello,
I would like to keep translated language and just change the name of the language.
I need my to be on English and Serbian Latinic and there is only Serbian Cyrilic.
I would like to use Bosnian because is on Latinic and just renameit Serbian,
is that even possible? I would really appreciate help.
Also I made my store default English, if I change default Serbian would all my data on English be lost?
Thank you in advance!
Hey @mivana , Iâll answer your second question first. Changing the default language changes what the system understands as the language youâve used to create your products etc. It doesnât swap anything. So if youâve written your product descriptions in English, and then changed the default language to Serbian, you would lose Serbian translations and have the system think your English descriptions are Serbian. Iâd strongly recommend not to do this. If you just want the default language customers land on to be Serbian, do that in Markets > Primary market > Languages and domains.
First question - there isnât a way to rename languages, but Iâm interested in understanding the issue more. If you just add âSerbianâ does that not give you what you need? Please share any screenshots to help me follow along 
Thank you very much for help and reply.
Thing with Serbian is that there are 2 types of letters in Serbian Latinic and Cyrilic, Shopify translates everything on Cyrilic and it is not common for our websites to be on Cyrilic so i have chosen Bosnian which is on Latinic and tought i could rename it but i would just retype Serbian from Cyrilic to latinic. I uploaded screenshots so you can see the difference.
Hi @mivana , Iâm away on holiday at the moment but will definitely get this looked at for you
Thank you! I have oen more question regaridn translate and adapt app also. It translated pages and some other sections on Serbian cyrilic but when i want to edit translations they dont exist and i can`t fix them or change. I would really appreciate help. Screenshot is below.
Hey @mivana , Iâve thought of a workaround. Add Serbian and Bosnian to your store, auto-translate Bosnian, then export your languages CSV for both Bosnian and then Serbian (one at a time, not both together) then copy the content from Column H on the Bosnian CSV to column H on the Serbian CSV. Upload and youâll have Latin text for Serbian. Donât publish Bosnian (unless you want to) and your store will just show Serbian in Latin text (and English). This is based on the assumption that written Bosnian is the same as Serbian, but uses Latin text not Cyrillic.
For your screenshot above, I wasnât clear on the question here but the reason there is no translation for âContentâ on the right is there is no default text in âContentâ in English. Only what exists in the default language will get translated by auto-translate.
Adding to what Rich mentioned here.
It isnât really possible to choose how youâd want the API to return the language translation. Best to do it with a workaround.
Thank you for help and effort. Store is not to big and to trasnlate it is not the problem. It is for example not being able to translate pages and to just fix translation in some parts because a little bit beacuse is generic it is bad overall. But thank you i returned to default Serbian, and still some parts like checkout i cant find a way to change from cyrilic and some parts are still english.
Hello,
I canât understand that Shopify hasnât fixed this problem yet. What is unusual about a country having two languages or scripts?
There may not be many of them that have two alphabets in one language, but technically it is not the least bit different from a bilingual country. Letâs say Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, ⌠Probably the highlight is Bosnia and Herzegovina, because it has three languages and two alphabets. This lack of the Shopify platform is causing serious damage to those markets.
In Serbia, many people immediately leave a site that is in the Latin alphabet and does not have the Cyrillic alphabet, or vice versa. Belgium is identical in terms of language. Or, try selling in English only in Quebec.
So is anyone at Shopify even thinking about this problem?
Hi @obucamonah , Iâm not clear what problem youâre highlighting - if itâs the ability to have more than one language show on your store then that is well catered for. Or is it something else? Happy to help
Hello,
I wouldnât really agree that it was explained nicely, because if you use the default theme, and do that json file renaming, the first next update of the theme will undo all the effort.
I am talking about the fact that I predefined the default language to custom Serbian (Latin) and wanted to add Serbian (Cyrillic by default), and Ĺ opifj did not really agree with my idea of having the same language twice but for different regions. I would say that someone thought about the problem but didnât try it in practice, because it doesnât work. Namely, what is the purpose of language customization if you donât allow two regions of the same language???
I hope itâs clear now what Iâm talking about.
Thanks, so the capability you want is to have Serbian in two scripts, both available when the country is set to Serbia, is that correct?
Hello,
Yeap. In Serbia, there is even a law that punishes sellers if they do not have inscriptions on both letters (because both are official). As I personally live in the USA and Ecuador, I am not sure how many people follow that law (I would say not really, because there are a lot of shops on the Shopify platform).
A similar problem exists in Ecuador (there are 14 official languages, and in the mountainous areas it is mandatory to have signs in Spanish and Quechua, otherwise Quechua will destroy your shops).
Please note that you donât have a single combination of countries with two languages (you have a language with two countries), so Iâm really interested in how happy users from countries with that case are (Iâm talking about destinations of millions, and even much more).
In short, I donât know what code you are using, it looks like ISO 639-1, not ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, where it is possible to define variants by country. Letâs say for Bosnia and Herzegovina bs_BA. sr_BA and hr_BA (it is not feasible now in Shopify) or for Serbia sr_RS_Cyrilic and sr_RS_Latin.
Thanks. The ability to have French and English in Quebec, or Spanish and Quechua in Ecuador, is well catered for. Just add those languages to the market containing that country or region. The issue here is specifically two forms of the same language in the same country. It requires two different URL forms for a single language. This has been addressed for Chinese, to allow Simplified and Traditional Chinese on the same market, but not other languages as there are not many in this situation (Serbian, Bosnian, Azeri, Uzbek). We can investigate the complexity of enabling two scripts.
Hello,
Iâm glad I was able to explain the problem well. Can you estimate in what time it will be possible, because I need to adopt a strategy with the client, what should be done now?
Hi @obucamonah , weâll look into the feasibility enabling a market containing Serbia to have Serbian available in both Cyrillic and Latin script, but wonât be able to give a time estimate. Again for confirmation French / Spanish / Quechua / any other language which doesnât use two scripts has no issues. For your short term requirement I suggest choosing if you want to translate into Serbian using Cyrillic or Latin characters. If Cyrillic, just add Serbian as a language and auto-translate. If Latin and you donât want to manually translate, use the workaround here.
Hello,
I wrote it, but you donât seem to understand. I canât have Serbian Latin because Shopify doesnât support it. Here is a screenshot of how the Serbian Latin and Cyrillic letters look (donât pay attention to English).
The text on the page was translated into Serbian Latin, but the system things remained in Serbian Cyrillic (like the language switcher), because Shopifaj sees Srpki exclusively as Cyrillic. If I use Croatian or Bosnian because of the Latin script, I will have in the langage switcher that it is Croatian and not Serbian.
In short, WORKARROUND DOES NOT EXIST.
P.S. - I set as Serbian custom language.
Hello,
I know an acceptable solution if it is possible to do something in the display of the language switcher. Namely, if I use default Serbian for Cyrillic, I can use Bosnian or Croatian for Latin. However, the only problem is the langage switcher, which shows that it is Croatian, not Serbian Latin.
Is it possible to change the display of the language name in the language switcher (here, instead of Croatian, Sepski)?
Hello,
No help with my question about changing the display language name in the language selector on website pages (not changing the translation language name)?
Hi, the question is answered earlier in the thread (here); there isnât a way to rename languages in default Shopify configuration. Translate & Adapt does not add language selectors, it uses the themeâs ones. But some third party apps allow you to add selectors and edit whatâs shown on them, for example LangShop. As mentioned we will review the complexity of enabling Cyrillic and Latin Serbian on one market, but are not able to commit to a time for that.
