Translations

Show your storefront text (the button, message, badge, cart label, Notify Me form, and so on) in each language and market. Translations are done in Shopify's free Translate & Adapt app, not inside Timesact. This guide walks you through it step by step.

How translations work

Each customer experience template you build is saved as a Shopify item called a Timesact Customer Experience (Shopify calls these "metaobjects"). The text that shows on your storefront lives inside that item, in fields named Pre order config, Back in stock config, Coming soon config, and Low stock config.

Shopify makes those items available in Translate & Adapt, where you add a translated copy of the text for each language. So the flow is simple: you write your text once in Timesact, then translate it in Translate & Adapt.

Good to know: the Translations tab inside a customer experience template is just an information panel. There is nothing to set up there, it only points you to your translation app.

Changing the text for your store's primary language

Translate & Adapt only creates translations for your secondary (published) languages. It cannot change the text of your store's primary language, because Shopify treats that as the original wording rather than a translation.

Timesact's default text is written in English. So if your store's primary language is not English, the Timesact Customer Experience entries still show the English wording as the original, and Translate & Adapt shows those primary-language fields as read-only copies you cannot edit. That is expected, not a fault.

To change the wording your primary-language shoppers see, edit it directly in Timesact instead:

1. In the Timesact app, open the Experiences tab and open the customer experience template attached to the product.
2. Under Storefront, open Product page and replace the wording with your own: in Button, the button text for your functionality (for example Pre-order button text), In-stock button text and Sold-out button text; in Message, the message text (for example Pre-order message); and in Badge, the badge text (for example Pre-order badge).
3. If the template includes Back in Stock, open the Notify Me form section and update its wording too: Form title, Form description, Email placeholder, Button text, Form note, Success message, Success button text and Error message. If SMS signup is on, also update SMS field label, Phone placeholder, SMS consent text and Phone error message.
4. Do the same on the Collection page tab. For Pre-order, also open Cart page and update Cart label, Cart alert pop-up and Mixed cart checkout. Then click Save.

• For a Wishlist template, edit the wording under Storefront: Product page → Texts, Collection page → Variant picker texts, and Wishlist → Floating launcher (Label) and Drawer and error texts.

Shoppers browsing in your primary language see the new text straight away. From then on, add your other languages in Translate & Adapt as described below, where the entries stay editable as normal.

Step 1 — Install Translate & Adapt

It is free and made by Shopify, and it installs on its own the first time you add a language. If you do not have it yet: Shopify admin → Settings → Languages → Install Shopify Translate & Adapt.

Step 2 — Add and publish the language

In Settings → Languages, add the language and publish it. A language that is added but not published will not show up in Translate & Adapt. If you only want different wording for the same language in another region (for example English for Canada), you can adapt it per market instead of adding a new language.

Step 3 — Translate the customer experience text

1. In Shopify admin, open Apps → Translate & Adapt.
2. At the top, pick the language or market you want to translate for. If it is not there yet, click Manage (top right) and add it.
3. Open the content dropdown and choose Metaobjects.
4. Find the Timesact Customer Experience entry for your customer experience template. Entries are named "Ce" followed by a number (for example Ce 1147), but the Title shown at the top is the easier way to spot the right one.
5. For each config field (Pre order config, Back in stock config, and so on), copy the original text from the Reference column into the translation column, then change only the wording, leaving everything else exactly as it is (more on that below).
6. Click Save. Shoppers in that language or market now see your translated text.

Repeat for each customer experience template and each language.

Which text to translate

Inside each config field you will see the text alongside some code. Translate only the human-facing wording, such as:

• the button text, sold-out text, and add-to-cart text
• the message text
• the badge text
• the cart label, and the cart alert and mixed-cart alert wording (title, message, button text, dismiss label)
• the timer title, subheading, labels (Days, Hrs, Mins, Secs), and the custom title shown when the timer ends
• the Notify Me form wording (title, description, button text, note, success message, error message, email placeholder, success button text), the SMS signup wording (SMS field label, phone placeholder, SMS consent text, phone error message) and the newsletter label
• the pre-order option description (the small note shown with the pre-order)
• the same fields again under the collection section
• for Wishlist, the values inside "texts" in the Feature configs field (for example "save":"Add to wishlist"). Leave featureKey, enabled, colours and sizes as they are.

What to leave exactly as it is

Only change the wording inside the quotation marks. Do not touch the field names, the structure, or the punctuation around them, and do not change any ids, styles, colours, sizes, dates, or fixed values like NO_DISCOUNT, ASAP, GLOBAL, or ALL. The Markets and Inventory locations fields are settings (GLOBAL, ALL), not text, so leave them alone.

Example (French). Change this:

"button":{"text":"Pre-order","type":"DEFAULT",...

to this:

"button":{"text":"Précommande","type":"DEFAULT",...

and change "addToCartText":"Add to Cart" to "addToCartText":"Ajouter au panier", keeping every field name and value the same. Only the words a shopper reads change.

Tip: for these fields, translate the wording by hand rather than using Auto-translate, or at least review Auto-translate's result before saving. Auto-translate can accidentally change the code around your text, and by doing it yourself you keep everything intact.

Troubleshooting

• The Timesact entries are not listed under Metaobjects: make sure the language is published in Settings → Languages.
• A word still shows in the original language on your storefront: that piece of text was not translated and saved for that language. Fill it in and save.
• A field is read-only, or a word will not change in Translate & Adapt: that is your store's primary-language original. Translate & Adapt only edits secondary languages, so change the wording directly in the Timesact app, see "Changing the text for your store's primary language" above.
• A setting you changed in the Timesact app (for example turning on the timer or a new end date) shows in your primary language but not in another one: each translation saves its own copy of the whole config field, settings included, so it keeps the settings from when you translated it. In Translate & Adapt, pick that language, open the Timesact Customer Experience entry, copy the current text from the Reference column into the translation column again, translate the wording as in Step 3 and click Save. Do this for each language whenever you change a setting in the template.

Learn more

• Shopify's guide to the Translate & Adapt app: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/international/translate-adapt-app

Updated on: 11/11/2026