Does Shopify supports Chinese language?

This is probably the first question that China and Taiwan merchants will ask about Shopify platform. My answer is Yes and No. In the storefront, there is not doubt that Shopify support Chinese language. However, when it come to the admin page that the merchant who operate the store, only English is supported at this moment. No worry, Shopify is in the progress to support more languages in the backend. In 2018, Shopify has extended to six languages: French, German, Japanese, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish. I foresee that the support of both traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese are coming very soon.

In this article, I will explain how to setup a Chinese Shopify stores including the customer front page, checkout page, and email notification.

How to setup a Chinese Shopify website?

1. Go to Theme > Online Store and then click “Edit Language”

2) Click “Change theme language” which is just below the page title.  Choose the target language for your website.

3) Start to translate text one by one.

How to setup Chinese email template in Shopify?

There are many email or sms notifications sent to your customers in the eCommerce business. To name a fews, order confirmation, shipping confirmation, abandoned checkout, order refund, order cancel, etc. Merchants should align the language used in customer communication and the storefront. Luckily, Shopify allows merchants to customize the email and sms content in Chinese language as well.

1) Click “Notifications” under Settings

2) Select the notification to start translation

3) Update the text to Chinese language.

Summary

We have shared the way how we can translate the whole Shopify website into Chinese language. This is very strict-forward. The drawback of this solution is that only one languages is supported in the webpage. In Hong Kong, a bilingual or trilingual website is very common. Shopify does not support multiple languages natively, there are apps that provide this this feature – Langify and Weglot.

If you are interested in learning more about international SEO in Shopify, check this out: Shopify SEO – GROW INTERNATIONALLY WITH MULTILINGUAL SEO.