Adding Multiple Languages to Your Storefront
Selling in more than one language widens your market and is often the single biggest conversion improvement an international store can make. On LaunchMyStore, your storefront's language support is driven by the locale files that ship with your theme, so the words shoppers see can switch based on their language.
How language support works
It helps to understand the two kinds of text on your storefront:
- Theme strings — buttons, labels, and copy built into your theme (Add to cart, Search, Loyalty Points, etc.). These come from the locale files included with your theme. Each theme ships with its own set of supported languages, so the languages you can offer depend on the locale files your theme includes — there is no automatic machine-translation engine that generates languages your theme doesn't already provide.
- Catalog content — the actual product names, descriptions, collection titles, page bodies, and blog posts you write. This text is shown exactly as you enter it in admin; it is not auto-translated, and there are no separate per-language fields on these records. If you want a product or page in another language, you enter that text yourself.
Setting your store languages
Under Settings → Languages you'll see your Primary language (English by default), which is the language your storefront opens in. The languages your storefront can actually display, though, are determined by the locale files your theme ships with and by the catalog content you enter — not by a separate translation toggle. So offering a language on your store comes down to two things:
- Make sure your theme includes a locale file for that language, so its built-in strings (buttons, labels) can appear in it.
- Enter your product, collection, page, and blog text in that language yourself.
Theme strings
Theme strings are supplied by your theme's locale files — you don't translate them one by one in admin. To customize the wording your theme uses, edit the theme's locale files directly through the theme files editor. Whether a given language is available for these strings depends on the locale files your theme includes.
Catalog content
Product, collection, page, and blog text is shown to shoppers exactly as you typed it in admin. There is no separate translation screen or language switcher inside the product/collection/page editors, and there is no built-in service that machine-translates this content. To present catalog content in another language, write it in that language when you create or edit the record.
How the storefront chooses a language
For theme strings, the storefront uses the shopper's browser language when a matching locale file is available, falls back to a country-to-language mapping (if you've set up multi-country selling), and finally to your primary language. If a particular string isn't present in a locale file, the theme falls back to its default language, so nothing breaks for the shopper.
Right-to-left languages
Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, and other right-to-left languages display correctly on themes that ship with RTL support. Check your theme's documentation if you're unsure whether it includes RTL locale files.
FAQ
Does LaunchMyStore auto-translate my store?
No. Theme strings come from the locale files included with your theme, and your catalog content (product names, descriptions, pages, blog posts) is displayed exactly as you enter it. There is no automatic machine-translation engine, so any wording you want in another language you provide yourself.
Which languages can I offer?
That depends on the locale files your theme ships with. A theme with more locale files supports more languages for its built-in strings.
How is the language chosen for a shopper?
The storefront uses the shopper's browser language when a matching locale file exists, then a country-to-language mapping (if multi-country selling is set up), and finally your primary language.
What happens if a string isn't in the locale file?
The theme falls back to its default language for that string — nothing breaks for the shopper.