Product category language changed to Chinese

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.

Came here to say the same thing but noticed it just resolved a minute ago. Seems like they had to perform a patch. That said, I notice Shopify has been a bit buggy lately. A few weeks ago, our product preview emails were sending a bunch of wrong links.

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