A guide to translating your on-site messages for every store language

If your Shopify store sells in more than one language, your on-site messages should speak each of them. A French shopper browsing your store in French should read the sale announcement, the product recommendation and the signup card in French too.

This guide shows how to translate Atomato campaigns so each shopper sees the version for the language they are browsing in. It covers what you can translate, what stays in your original language, how prices and currencies behave, and how to check every language before a busy sale.

What translations do in Atomato

On Scale and Enterprise+, you can give each NotiFeed, NotiPop, NotiSell and NotiEmail campaign its own text in every language your Shopify store sells in. NotiSell needs Scale or higher, and NotiEmail needs Enterprise+. Shoppers see the version for the language they are browsing in. Any field you leave empty shows your original text.

Atomato does not translate for you. You type each translation yourself, beside your original text. That keeps you in control of tone, offer wording and legal lines, which matters most in the messages that carry a discount or a signup.

The language list comes from Shopify. Add and publish each language under Settings > Languages in your Shopify admin first. If your store has no other language yet, Atomato shows an Add new language button that opens those settings.

Where to add your translated text

There are two ways in, and both lead to the same page.

• From Settings: in Atomato, click Settings, then the Translations tab. Choose the campaign type, pick the campaign, then check the language beside it.
• From the campaign editor: click Translate at the top of a campaign. The button shows when your store has more than one language, and stays grayed out until you have saved the campaign once.

Your original text sits on the left under Reference. You type on the right, under the language name. A campaign with several messages has one block per message, headed Notification 1, Notification 2 and so on. Click Save when you are done.

The help article on translating campaigns covers every field and button on that page.

What you can translate, and what you can't

Each campaign type has its own set of translatable fields.

• NotiFeed and NotiPop: title, description, image, emoji, button text and button link. The link can point to a page in the shopper's language, such as a translated collection.
• NotiSell: title, description and the Add to cart button text.
• NotiEmail: the title, description, image and emoji of each step, including SMS, plus placeholders, button text and the consent lines.

A few things stay in your original language or in English:

• Answer choices for a NotiEmail question are not on the Translations page.
• Select an option on a NotiEmail dropdown question, and Variant, Subscription and One-time purchase in NotiSell product options, always show in English.
• The Back control on an opened feed message comes translated for many languages, such as French, German and Japanese. Other languages, and regional codes such as pt-BR, show it in English.
• The Title of a NotiSell offer, which shoppers see in the cart and at checkout, reads the same in every language.

Translation works field by field. If you translate a title but not its button, the button shows in your original language. Translate every field in a message so shoppers never see two languages at once.

How product names, prices and currencies show

NotiSell gets each product's name, variants and price from Shopify for the shopper's country and language. So product names come from your Shopify translations, not from Atomato. Translate them in Shopify.

Prices show with the currency symbol of the shopper's cart, then the amount to two decimals, such as €24.00. Every currency uses this format, even ones that usually show no decimals.

Watch fixed-amount offers. With a NotiSell offer set to Fixed amount, the number you enter comes off in the shopper's currency with no conversion. An offer of 5 takes €5 off for a shopper paying in euros and $5 off for one paying in dollars. A percentage discount takes the same share off in every currency, so it is often the simpler choice for a store selling in several markets.

Worked example: one Black Friday campaign in English and French

Say your store sells in English and French, and you are preparing a Black Friday Cyber Monday feed campaign with two messages: the sale announcement and a free-shipping reminder.

First, build and save the campaign in English. Then click Translate, check that French is selected, and fill in each field for both messages.

Notification 1, English: Black Friday starts now. 20% off everything until Monday night. Button: Shop the sale. Link: /collections/black-friday

Notification 1, French: Le Black Friday commence. 20 % de remise sur tout jusqu'à lundi soir. Button: Voir les offres. Link: /fr/collections/black-friday

Notification 2, English: Free shipping on orders over $75 all weekend. Button: Start shopping.

Notification 2, French: Livraison offerte dès 75 $ tout le week-end. Button: Commencer.

Before: the French storefront showed the English announcement, and the button sent French shoppers to the English collection. After: French shoppers read the sale in French and land on the French collection. Notice the free-shipping line keeps the same threshold and currency as the English version, so check that it matches what your store actually charges in each market.

If you schedule the campaign to start and end, that schedule belongs to the whole campaign, so both languages go live and stop together. Scheduling is on Scale and Enterprise+. The guide to scheduling campaigns to start and stop on time covers the setup.

Check every language on your live storefront

Saved translations show on your store from the next page load. The store preview in Atomato does not let you pick a language, so check each language on the live storefront.

1. Once the campaign is live, switch your storefront to each language.
2. Open the feed and read each message from start to finish, including the button.
3. Click each button and confirm it lands on the page in the right language.
4. If the campaign uses NotiSell, confirm products load and prices show in the right currency. On a regional language code such as pt-BR, contact the Atomato team if products don't load.

Keep translations in step with your original text. If you edit the English text later, update the other languages too, because they keep the earlier translation until you do. A duplicated campaign starts with no translations, so add them again before it goes live.

Limits to know

• Translations need Scale or Enterprise+. On Starter, the free plan, the Translations page shows that it is not on your plan, and the Translate button is grayed out.
• Atomato does not translate text automatically. Generate text on the Translations page writes new text from keywords you type. It does not see your original text, so read every result before you keep it.
• You can't upload an image on the Translations page. Add a different image to your Shopify Files first, then pick it with Select from Files.
• Atomato does not target messages by location. Shoppers see a language version based on the language they browse in, not where they are.
• Messages do not show on Shopify checkout, the thank-you page, POS or headless stores.

Next step

Pick the one campaign most shoppers will see this season, usually your sale announcement, and translate every field of it into each language your store sells in. Then switch your storefront to each language and read it as a shopper would. Once that one is right, move on to your NotiSell and signup campaigns. Compare plans on the pricing page.

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