Product category language changed to Chinese

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

A widespread Shopify bug has caused product category names to suddenly change from English to Chinese across multiple stores, affecting merchants with thousands of products and variants.

Scope of Impact:

  • Multiple store owners report the same issue occurring simultaneously
  • Affects stores with 2,000+ products
  • Only product categories are affected; other site elements remain in English
  • One merchant also reported concurrent Apple Pay checkout issues, though the connection is unclear

Troubleshooting Attempts:

  • Users confirmed language settings still show English
  • Clearing cache/cookies, switching browsers, and restarting computers did not resolve the issue
  • The problem persists across different devices and browsers

Shopify’s Response:

  • Support has confirmed this is a platform-wide issue, not user error
  • Developers are actively investigating and treating it as high priority
  • Affected merchants will be notified via email once resolved
  • No timeline provided for the fix

The issue remains unresolved, with merchants unable to add new products confidently due to uncertainty about correct category assignments.

Summarized with AI on November 9. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hello,

I have over 2K products. All the product categories changed to Chinese! I have looked everywhere and cannot understand how this was changed. Everything else is in English. When scrolling thru the category list on product page nothing is in English. Your help is appreciated. Thanks!

21 Likes
2

I am seeing others having the same issue. I sure hope it can be fixed. How is tech support notified?

7 Likes
3

Same happening with me on over 8,000 products :-(. Another change on top of so many constant changes by Shopify. Frustrating!

5 Likes
4

Same happening here. Over 2000 products.

2 Likes
5

Same problem here on two different Shopify websites, each site with thousands of product variants.

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6

Me too, hopefully a fix ASAP

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7

It sounds like there might have been a glitch or a bulk update that caused the product categories to change to Chinese. Contact Shopify Support for assistance in resolving this issue. They can investigate and help you restore the categories to English.

8

Same thing with me. I just hope Shopify fix it quickly!

1 Like
9

Hello, we’re having this exact same issue.

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10

Impossible, i haven’t mass updated or uploaded any new products.

2 Likes
11

SAME!

12

Same here! I hope they fix it soon!

13

same here

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14

Same here, multiple stores combined of 6-7k products, all chinese all of a sudden

2 Likes
15

any updates from support team? I have no luck reaching anyone an am having the same issue.

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16

Oh wow! I was just trying to fix that, got no where and decided to google it and saw everyone has the same issue last one hour :slightly_smiling_face: thats funny thou, we all freaked out i guess :)))

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17

I hope this is just a coincidence, but a customer contacted us a couple hours ago and told us they had trouble paying with apple pay, they were charged twice, and then their alternate card was unable to process when they tried to check out with that. I came here because I noticed the chinese categories changed on my products page, I would normally just assume that the checkout trouble was customer error, but I hope they’re not related. Just posting this to make sure no one else had checkout trouble today, I’m sure people doing more volume than us would notice.

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18

Same, and I notified them as well, hoping they fix quick!

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19

i definetly did hahaha

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20

Same thing for me as well with nearly 10k products. It’s clearly a much bigger problem than just us, so hopefully everyone reports it so they fix it.

2 Likes