Shopify Translate & Adapt

Many merchants use the official Shopify Translate & Adapt app to translate their storefront into different languages for each market. If your store uses Translate & Adapt, you'll need to manually translate your test variations — auto-translation of variants created in Elevate is not currently supported.

This guide walks you through how to translate your test variants so the experiment works correctly across all languages.

---

Why This Is Needed

Page experiments use Shopify's alternate template system. Each variation is a separate template file in your theme. Translate & Adapt stores translations at the template level — so when Elevate creates a new variation template, it has no translations by default.

If you skip this step, visitors viewing the variation in a non-default language will see untranslated content, which can hurt the experience and skew your test results.

---

How to Translate Test Variants

Step 1: Create Your Test Variant in Elevate

Set up your experiment in Elevate as normal. When you create a variation, Elevate generates a new template file with a naming convention that includes an eab- suffix followed by a template ID — for example, product.eab-abc123.json. This is how you'll identify your variation template in the Translate & Adapt app.

Step 2: Make Your Changes to the Variant

Before translating, finalize all edits on the variation template in the Shopify Theme Editor. This ensures your translations apply to the actual content visitors will see during the test — not to content you're about to change.

Get the variation looking exactly how you want it in the default language first, then move to translation.

Step 3: Translate the Variant in Translate & Adapt

1. Open the Translate & Adapt app in Shopify

2. In the navigation sidebar, look for your variation template using the eab- identifier from Step 1

3. Translate the content for each market/language your store supports

Make sure to translate everything that appears on the page — headings, descriptions, button text, section content, and any other visible text. The translations should be equivalent to what exists on your control template, with only the intentional test changes differing.

Step 4: Review and Launch

Once translations are saved, review the variation in each language before launching:

• If you have a VPN, use it to view the store from different geographic locations and confirm the correct translations load for each market

• Alternatively, use Shopify's market preview to check how the page looks in each language

• Pay attention to layout — translated text can be longer or shorter than the original, which may affect spacing and element positioning

Once everything looks good, launch your test in Elevate.

---

Common Issues

Can't find the variation template in Translate & Adapt Look for the template name containing the eab- prefix. If your control template is product.json, the variation will be something like product.eab-abc123.json. Use the search or scroll through the template list in the sidebar.

Variation shows untranslated content in some languages The variation template hasn't been fully translated. Go back to Translate & Adapt and check that all sections of the variation have translations for every language.

Layout looks broken in certain languages Some languages produce significantly longer text than English (German and French are common examples). Check that your variation layout handles longer text gracefully — this can happen on the control too, but it's worth verifying on your variations.

Experiment not running for some locales If your store uses Shopify Markets with locale-specific URL prefixes (e.g., /fr/, /de/), Elevate handles these automatically. But during QA, visit the experiment page through each locale prefix to confirm it's working.

---

Best Practice

Build translation into your experiment workflow so it doesn't become an afterthought:

1. Create the variation in Elevate

2. Customize it in the Shopify Theme Editor

3. Translate it in Translate & Adapt

4. Review in each language

5. Launch the experiment

This ensures every visitor sees a properly translated page, regardless of which variation they're assigned to — keeping the experience clean and the data reliable.