How to translate your Shopify store using DeepL?

Is it smart to use DeepL for Shopify translations?

DeepL stands out as one of the most accurate machine translation tools available. Its strength lies in Neural Machine Translation (NMT) technology, which goes beyond word-for-word translation.

Thanks to neural networks, DeepL analyzes context, sentence structure, and language patterns to produce translations that feel natural and human-like. It also does a solid job of capturing subtle nuances. This means your product titles, descriptions, marketing copy, and technical content can be translated with more fluency and precision.

DeepL supports over 30 languages, offers features like glossaries and a formal/informal tone option, and provides a DeepL API key for businesses.

Having a glossary sounds useful, right? It most definitely is, but it’s currently only available through the DeepL website. Two important things to mention here:

• The glossary is not yet included in the DeepL desktop apps, mobile apps, browser extensions, or DeepL API
• To access and use the glossary generator, you'll need a DeepL Pro Advanced or Ultimate plan (or a bundle that includes one of these 2 plans)

Now let’s take a look at how accurate DeepL is for Shopify translations.

Is DeepL for Shopify translations accurate?

The company claims DeepL is far more accurate than Google Translate, ChatGPT-4, and Microsoft AI translation tools, and used by millions every day.

DeepL has outperformed competitors like Google Translate in several blind tests, where professional translators preferred DeepL’s translations up to 3 times more often.

Of course, human post-editing will be necessary anyhow, but DeepL claims to give you a 30% boost in productivity.

Pros and cons of using DeepL for Shopify translation

So far, so good, right? But let’s take a closer look at the pros and cons of using DeepL to translate your Shopify store

Pros:

• DeepL provides more accurate and contextually aware translations compared to many competitors
• The technology based on neural networks makes translations sound more natural and human-like
• You can customize translations using glossaries and adjust for formal or informal tone
• The interface is intuitive and easy to use

Cons

• DeepL has limited language support
• It lacks advanced features like translation memory, which can be useful for repetitive text
• It lacks features for teams to collaborate or track translations, which can be limiting for larger projects
• While affordable for smaller tasks, DeepL Pro can get costly for businesses that need large-scale translations

Lastly, the biggest downside of using DeepL for Shopify translations is that it doesn’t offer out-of-the-box integration with Shopify. This means you need to manually copy, paste, and manage translations.

How to use DeepL for Shopify translations

Since DeepL’s free plan is rather limiting, you will need to choose a paid plan. Starter and Advanced plan have a 30-day free trial available.

Below, you can see the overview of the DeepL pricing plans:

Please note that these pricing plans cover the DeepL Translator service. DeepL’s API comes as a paid add-on. 

Once you choose a plan based on your translation needs, you can start translating. Like we mentioned before, the process is manual, so you need to carve out time to do it right.

Step 1: Export your Shopify content

Before translating, you need to export the content of your Shopify ecommerce in a CSV format. This includes product titles, descriptions, blog posts, pages, and other text-based content.

To export your content:

• Navigate to “Products”, “Pages”, and other sections of your Shopify website
• Use the “Export” option to download CSV files with the content you want to translate

Step 2: Upload the content to DeepL

Once you’ve exported your content, upload the CSV file into DeepL’s translation tool. DeepL allows you to translate text in batches. This is how you can make sure large volumes of content get translated to target languages quickly.

Step 3: Review and adjust DeepL Shopify translations

While DeepL is known to be accurate, it’s still important to review the translations. You need to make sure the context is there, and to preserve your brand’s tone as well. This is important, especially if your website uses industry-specific jargon.

Step 4: Import the translated content

After reviewing and refining the translated content, you can import it back into your Shopify website. If you're translating product descriptions, for example, you'll upload the CSV file with the translated text back into the respective sections. Here’s how to do it:

• Make sure CSV files match Shopify’s format, with proper columns for product descriptions, titles, etc.
• Go to Shopify Admin panel, and navigate to the section you want to update (“Products”, “Pages”, etc.)
• Click “Import” and select your translated CSV file
• Shopify will notify you of any formatting errors in the file
• After the import, manually check your store to confirm translations are displayed properly

To reiterate, DeepL doesn’t directly integrate with Shopify, so you can’t really avoid manually importing translations, which can be especially challenging when dealing with dynamic content localization.

Final word on DeepL for Shopify translations

To use DeepL for Shopify translations, you don’t need to be a developer. However, you should be comfortable exporting and importing CSV files, and editing them within Excel or Google Sheets. You also need to be familiar with Shopify’s interface and comfortable navigating product pages.

Is it the most intuitive way to translate your Shopify? Probably not.

As a business owner, you probably want a plug-and-play solution, something that will help you grow your ecommerce business internationally, but still remain easy to manage and cost-efficient. 

Another thing to factor in is the time to market. The sooner you make your store multilingual, the better. Not only will it help you reach international customers, but it will also support your international SEO efforts.

The time you need to translate your Shopify ecommerce depends on the amount of content you have. Translating and reviewing content for a small-to-medium store could take 2–3 days. Larger international ecommerce businesses with hundreds of products may notice they need more time, a week or more, depending on the pace.