Translating Multimedia content: How to change video content depending on selected language?

Retired Boards Appdev Store Design

Topic summary

Need to swap YouTube videos based on selected language so English visitors don’t see German videos. Current setup translates text but not media; changing a video in the theme editor affects all languages.

Proposed solution: Use the Langify app’s Custom Content feature to translate media URLs per language. This lets you provide language-specific video links.

Implementation details:

  • Add the video URL to Custom Content. If the full URL isn’t picked up, try a protocol-relative URL (//www.youtube.com/…) instead of https://.
  • In many themes, translating only the YouTube video ID (e.g., rgZU5pDf6mw) works; sometimes translating the relative path (/watch?v=rgZU5pDf6mw) is needed.
  • Short youtu.be links won’t translate; use the full YouTube URL.
  • The “translate video ID” approach also applies to multilingual forms.

Latest update: A more detailed tutorial will be published on the Langify FAQ later today. Direct support is available via the app’s page.

Status: No confirmed resolution from the site owner yet; viable solution provided, discussion open.

Summarized with AI on December 30. AI used: gpt-5.
1

We have a question regarding translations. We have multimedia content and at the moment our website is in german. If we want to translate to english, then we would like to change the videos. Videos are implemented via a youtube-link. So the question is, if it is somehow manageable to change links and multimedia content in general on the translated site.

Otherwise we have the issue that, if a customer selects english then the whole site is in english but the explanation-videos are still in german which will put off the english speaking visitors.

If we change the video to english in the theme editor it will simply change across all languages, since the translation app translates the texts of each section but nothing more. Short illustration:

Welttisch_1-1714550035001.png
Welttisch_1-1714550035001.png556Ă—386 219 KB

Can someone give an easy solution on how to implement that?

Thanks in advance!

1 Like
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Hi @Welttisch ,

Michael from Langify here.

If you’re using Langify then you can simply use the Custom Content feature to translate your media.

Here’s a short guide on how to use Custom Contents in Langify:

https://support.langify-app.com/support/solutions/articles/11000082059-custom-content-translations

You can add the video URL to the Custom Content to translate the video. If the full URL doesn’t work please try removing the leading “https:” part like this

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgZU5pDf6mw

Oftentimes it suffices to translate only the video ID rgZU5pDf6mw (which is also the case for multilingual forms by the way).

In some cases the video can be translated by translating the relative path that is /watch?v=rgZU5pDf6mw for the above example.

All of these variations stem from the difference in how different themes implement videos.

Note that if you’re translating a YouTube link then there’s a special case where short links like youtu.be won’t get translated. You’d have to use the full YouTube URL with Custom Contents.

I’ll add a more detailed tutorial on this to https://faq.langify-app.com/ later today.

If you need any hands on help with this feel free to reach out to us

https://apps.shopify.com/langify#adp-developer