Smartling's Shopify Connector supports the translation of market-specific content for Themes, allowing you to create customized content for different regional markets, even if they share the same language.
This feature is particularly useful when different messaging, promotions, or pricing information is required for specific markets.
What is market-specific content?
Market-specific content is generated when you customize your Shopify store content for particular markets beyond simple currency or formatting changes.
For example:
A promotion that reads "Save $100" in your US store might be customized to "Save £75" with different terms for the UK market.
Product descriptions may vary between markets due to regional regulations or preferences.
Marketing messages may be tailored to local cultural contexts.
In Shopify, this market-specific content is stored as a "translation" of your default language for that particular market, even when both markets use the same source language (e.g., English).
When to use market-specific content?
You may want to enable the translation of market-specific content if:
You maintain different product information or promotions across markets
Your content varies by market beyond simple currency conversions
You have regulatory requirements that differ by region
You want to optimize messaging for local market preferences
How it works
Content ingestion into Smartling
Once the translation of market-specific content has been configured for Smartling's Shopify connector, the translation process works as follows:
The connector ingests your default source content (i.e. the standard content for your store).
It also ingests any market-specific Theme variations that you have created in Shopify.
Both sets of content are combined into the same translation job in Smartling.
Market-specific strings include the market name as a prefix in the string variant name.
Note: As your translation jobs will include both the default content and market-specific variations, the translation volume and costs will increase if this feature is enabled.
Translation delivery
During translation delivery:
Default content is delivered to all configured target locales
Market-specific content is delivered only to the specific market it belongs to
Configuring the translation of market-specific content
Prerequisites
You must have markets configured in Shopify with customized content
The language must be configured as a market-specific language (e.g., "French (Canada)") rather than a global language (e.g., "French")
Enable the feature in Smartling
To include market-specific content in translation jobs created with Smartling's Shopify Connector, this feature needs to be enabled in your project settings:
Within your Shopify Connector project in Smartling, navigate to the Settings tab > Shopify Settings > Language Configuration
For each market-specific language, you will see a checkbox for the option to "Include Market-Specific Content"
Note: The checkbox only appears for market-specific languages. Global languages (without a specific market) will not show this option.
Check the box to enable market-specific content translation for that language
Save your language configuration
Please note that enabling market-specific content will increase your translation volume and costs, as you will be translating both default and market-specific variations of your content.