Setting Up Your Shopify Connector

Please note that this Connector is a paid product. For pricing information, please reach out to your Smartling Customer Success Manager.

Prerequisites

Markets and Languages 

Shopify enables businesses to create localized shopping experiences by offering options for local languages and currencies through Markets. A market can include a single country or region, or a group of countries or regions. Before using Smartling’s Shopify Connector, ensure your Shopify environment has the appropriate markets set up to meet your store’s needs. For more information, please refer to the Shopify documentation.

Within each market, you can add languages. Before adding a language to a market, it must be added to your top-level list of global languages. You can add multiple global languages to your store from the Languages section of your Shopify admin. 


You can manage languages for each of your markets in the Markets section of your Shopify admin. 



Please see the Shopify documentation for additional details. 

The Shopify Connector uses the names of your markets and languages to map your content to the appropriate target language in Smartling when you complete the connector’s language configuration.  

Translate & Adapt App

Before using the connector, ensure that Shopify’s Translate & Adapt app is installed in your Shopify environment. You can verify this by navigating to your Languages settings page. This app is installed automatically when you add a new language to your store. If you already have languages published and need to install the app, go to Store language settings and click Install Shopify Translate & Adapt. If the app is already installed, you will see the option to Open the app.

We recommend pinning the app to your navigation for easy access. 



The Translate & Adapt app serves as an interface for localizing your content. Any content visible and accessible within this app can also be accessed by the connector. You can use this app to view both your source content and translations. Once translations are completed in Smartling, they will be delivered back to your Shopify environment and will be visible in the Translate & Adapt app.

Create a dedicated Smartling project for the Shopify Connector

You must create one dedicated Smartling project per Shopify store. If you require multiple storefronts, you will need to create a separate Smartling project for each.

1. Create a new project in Smartling.
2. Select the project type "Connector".
3. Select "Shopify" as your connecting platform.
4. Choose your desired source and target locales. 

Once the project has been created, ensure that all workflows, linguistic assets, and team members are set up correctly. In particular, we recommend checking that the default workflows for all of your target languages are set up according to your preferences. If auto-authorization is enabled in your Smartling settings, these workflows will be used automatically for all translation requests through the Connector. 

 

Connect Shopify to Smartling

Step 1: Generate API tokens

To connect your Shopify storefront to Smartling, you will need two types of Shopify API tokens: Admin and Storefront. To create these tokens:

1. Create a custom app within Shopify. Go to Settings > Apps and sales channels. Click Develop apps at the top right, then click Create an app. 
   
2. Enter an App name. We recommend using a descriptive name like "Smartling Connector." Select an App developer. This is a user with permissions to develop apps in your Shopify environment. Then click Create app. 
   
   
   
3. Click Configure Admin API scopes and select the following scopes:
   
   • write_translations
   • read_translations
   • read_metaobjects
   • read_metaobject_definitions
   • read_products
   • read_locales
   • read_content
   • read_themes
   • read_markets
   
   
   
   Click Save. 
4. Under the Configuration tab, click Configure within Storefront API integration. 
   
   Select the following scopes and click Save:
   • unauthenticated_read_content
   • unauthenticated_read_product_listings
5. Once completed, click Install app and retrieve the Admin API access token and Storefront API access token credentials. You will need these tokens to connect your Shopify environment to Smartling in Step 2. 
   
   

Step 2: Connect Shopify to Smartling

1. Navigate to your Shopify Connector project in Smartling
2. Click the Settings tab > Shopify Settings > Connect to Shopify 
   
3. Enter the following:
   • Store Name: This is the domain name for your shop. E.g., in the example below,  quickstart-2ef5837e would be entered in this field. 
     
   • Admin Token
   • Storefront Token
   • Source Language
     
4. (Optional) Verify your credentials by clicking Test Connection. 
5. Click Save Connection. 

Configure the Shopify Connector

Once you have successfully connected your Shopify store to Smartling, complete the following configurations within the Shopify Settings page by navigating to the project > Settings tab > Shopify Settings. 

• General
• Language Configuration
• Metafields filters
• Smartling Settings

General 

Automation of Prior Requests for Translation 

This setting controls how you want the connector to monitor changes to content that has already been requested for translation in Smartling. 

Options include: 

• Auto: The connector will detect changes to previously submitted source content every three hours. Any detected updates are batched into a Job and sit in awaiting authorization. However, if auto-authorize is enabled under Smartling Settings, the updated content is automatically authorized for translation. This feature does not detect content in new assets—only updates to content from assets previously submitted for translation. In other words, if an asset is brand new and has never been requested for translation, its content will not be picked up by this automation. See additional details here. 
• Manual: The connector checks for changes to source content every 3 hours but does not automatically submit updates for translation.
• Disabled: The connector does not check for changes to source content.

Three hours is the shortest recommended duration between checks. Consult your Solution Architect to adjust the frequency to a longer interval using cron. 

Language Configuration 

In the Language Configuration section, you will see the target languages for the project. The first time you open this page, you will find a blank field to the left of each of the Smartling target languages. For each Smartling target language, select the appropriate Shopify language from the dropdown menu.

• Top-level global languages correspond to simple language names, such as French or German.
• Market-specific languages follow the format language (market), such as French (Canada market) or German (United States).

Click the checkmark to save each mapping. In order for a market-specific language option to appear, the market must be enabled in your Shopify environment. 

Any language left blank will not appear in the list of target languages when requesting content for translation in Smartling. 

Each time you add a new language to the project, you must map that language in the connector settings.

1. From within your Shopify project, click on the Settings tab > Shopify Settings. 
2. Select the appropriate language from the dropdown menu. 
3. Click the checkmark to save each mapping. 
   
   
   In this example, the Shopify store has a Canada market and a United States market. French has been added as a language for the Canada market, while German has been added as a language for the United States market.

Metafields Filters

In Shopify, Product metafields can be specified for each product. 

Exclude or include metafields

In the Shopify Connector settings in Smartling, you can define whether metafields should be included or excluded from the translation process.

Disabling a metafield filter

A metafield filter can be temporarily deactivated by selecting “Disabled” from the dropdown menu. Note that deleting a metafield filter is permanent.

Wildcards and ordering

• Wildcards can be used in filtering rules. 
• To ensure a specific rule overrides a wildcard (e.g., to exclude everything except for a specific metafield), place the specific rule above the wildcard rule. 
• Order matters, filtering rules are executed sequentially from top to bottom. If a more specific rule should override the wildcard (e.g., to exclude everything except for a specific metafield), place the specific rule above the wildcard rule. 
  
  Example: 
  
  The more specific filter rule is placed above the less specific rule containing wildcards. This ensures that the specific metafield is included, while all other metafields captured by the second rule are excluded. 

Rule descriptions

We recommend adding a brief explanation as to why each filter was added, and by whom. This helps provide clarity and identify why certain filters were implemented. 

 

Smartling Settings

Talk to your Customer Success Manager or Solution Architect about options regarding auto-authorization, translation retrieval type, file versioning, and capturing custom placeholders. For more details, see the information linked here. 

Now, you're ready to start Translating with the Shopify Connector.