I’d really like to open my Shopify store with Printful products I’ve added, sometime over the next few days, during the first month of the trial three months. But there is one thing I can’t figure out and surprisingly even Shopify support can’t help.
My shop’s main language is in Japanese, and people can switch to English.
I managed to localize it so the language selection in footer is clear
But at the top the language drop down just says 日本語 (Japanese for Japanese).
I’d like to either make that look like in the footer, or at least change the 日本語 to 日本語 / Japanese so English speakers will understand that it’s a language selection drop down menu.
But support can’t figure out how to do that. I’m surprised. Anybody here know?
It seems like it would an obvious setting for a multi-language site.
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Hello!
This is a theme-related issue—Shopify doesn’t auto-label language names in both languages by default.
I can help you:
Fix your top language dropdown to show “日本語 / Japanese”
Match it with the footer dropdown
Make it more user-friendly for international visitors
Let me know if you’d like help! I specialize in Shopify multilingual setup and custom theme tweaks
Hi @douglerner
This will be theme theme specific but the simplest solution to avoid confusion maybe to add some text above the language selector in english that says “Choose Language”.
Otherwise some conditional logic could be applied to the code to identify “日本語” and change it to “Japanese”
Feel free to contact me for any more questions,
Jake
I’m using the Rise theme. This is my first time to use Shopify and it was the first one to pop up, so I selected it.
Yes, adding some text above the language selector in English that says, “Choose Language” (much like already exists at the bottom of the page) would be fine. But… where? I don’t see any place to edit that section. Even though I edited text elsewhere in the settings that changed some items in that section.
It’s all pretty confusing. 
I’ve looked just about everywhere trying to figure out where that section exists in the code.
Hi Douglerner,
The best resolution is to switch your store to English for English speakers automatically.
Then for most of users, they don’t need to switch language by Menu.
You could check if you can make it auto switch by adjusting Language or Market configs. I don’t remeber how to set it…
https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/international/localization-and-translation
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In Rise it seems there is an Announcement Bar at the top, then a section-with-no-name where this language menu is, then the header section. The announcement bar and the header section can be edited, and blocks added, and so on. But I don’t see how to edit this line below the announcement bar.
Hey! @douglerner ,
This issue happens because the language selector text in the header is often hardcoded or controlled by the theme’s locale settings. To change “日本語” to “日本語 / Japanese,” you’ll likely need to edit your theme’s language files or directly modify the header code (usually in the header.liquid or a related snippet). Look for a label like language.name or similar in the theme files, and manually update it there. If you’re using Shopify Markets with native translation, apps like “Translate & Adapt” may help adjust this as well.
The file for the language selector should be snippets/language-localization.liquid
You could try replacing the code:
{{ language.endonym_name | capitalize }}
With this code:
{% if language.endonym_name == ‘日本語’ %}
Japanese
{% else %}
{{ language.endonym_name | capitalize }}
{% endif %}
Let me know how that goes!
I just tried that, but it didn’t seem to change anything, so I reverted to the original and saved. Why after reverting and saving do I see a black dot next to the filename?
Getting sleepy now. Will continue in the morning.
Thanks, everybody, for all your suggestions so far!
The black dot just means the file has been edited
For every save it creates a new version so even when you revert to original the black do will still appear.
Interesting. So are the versions all saved there so you can revert?
Fortunately, I copied the original to my text editor before making the suggested change. Because I tried undoing it with command Z, eventually the entire content disappeared. But I was able to paste the contents back in and save again.
Yes, you should see a version for every save so basically any save point you can jump back to!
Awake again. So what would have been the best way for me to revert that suggested change? I used CMD+Z to “undo” my changes. That worked, but eventually the entire contents of the file disappeared! So it was good I had backed it up in my text editor so I could paste it back in and save.
Today’s the 15th my “personal deadline” for opening the shop for the first time, even though I just have 18 products listed so far. Just to get started. There’s nothing critical about this date. Today just begins the 2nd of the first three trial months is all.
Another idea, going back to your suggestion of adding text above the drop-down menu (like there is at the bottom of the page) - where on earth do I edit that section? Some of the text I edited (somewhere) shows up there, but I don’t see where that section itself is.
If I try to edit the page, above that section is the announcement bar, which I can edit. And below that section is apparently the header where I was able to edit the liquid file and get shop info and my mascot in. But that section with the country and language section seems to be in-between that somehow. Unless it’s a fixed part of the header that needs to be changed in the code.
Thanks.
Hmm… Maybe it’s ok. I set something (somewhere - I can’t remember where - the UI is quite confusing) to automatically match the language of the incoming browser.
My browser is set to English and I came in via an incognito window and it was in English. Maybe that’s sufficient. I’ll test with a Japanese browser as well.
Yes, with the “match the language of the user’s browser” toggle on (I can’t remember where that was) then if the device is running in Japanese it appears in Japanese, and if it’s running in English it appears in English. So that’s good enough for now. Thanks, all.
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I did try that, but couldn’t find the right place to edit and/or that particular item wasn’t in header.liquid or all the liquid files I tried. In the meantime, I did find a setting to automatically set the language to the language of the user’s browser. I tested that by changing my device setting between Japanese and English and accessing and that did seem to work. Thanks.
That’s basically what I ended up doing. I stumbled across that setting (no idea where it was - the UI is quite confusing) and tested it and it works. So I’m going with that method for now. Thanks.
Agh!
My thinking was if the language aligns with the user’s computer/browser language then it might be best to have the site default language as English. Then I can send over Printful product descriptions and they will display in the default English and I can use the translation features to make a Japanese version of each.
But…
After doing the switch that toggle to have the language default to the user’s browser no longer works. It defaults to English regardless. The user can switch to Japanese, but if they are coming in in Japanese it doesn’t default.
Anything I can do about that?
Thanks.
Sorry for the multi-messaging. Maybe it’s ok. Maybe it was just cached. When I went in via a new browser in Japanese the site defaulted to Japanese.
