Languages
Colophon ships with English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. All five cover every storefront string the theme renders — 214 of them, the same count in each file — so nothing falls back to English mid-page.
Turning a language on
The translations are in the theme; publishing them is a store setting.
- Settings → Languages → Add language.
- Pick French, German, Spanish or Italian.
- Publish it.
Until you do that, ?locale=fr does nothing — Shopify will not serve a language the store has not added, no matter what the theme contains. This is the single most common reason merchants think the translations are missing.
Once published, Shopify adds a language selector to the header if you have turned on show language in the header settings.
What is translated, and what is not
Translated by the theme: every word Colophon itself renders — buy buttons, cart, search, filters and sorting, the account pages, form labels and errors, delivery and stock notices, pagination, and the accessibility text screen readers announce.
Not translated by the theme, because it is your content, not ours:
| Your content | Where to translate it |
|---|---|
| Product titles and descriptions | Shopify’s Translate & Adapt app (free) |
| Collection names and descriptions | Translate & Adapt |
| Page and blog content | Translate & Adapt |
| Menu labels | Translate & Adapt |
| Anything you typed into a theme setting — headings, banner text, the announcement note | Translate & Adapt, under Theme content |
That last row catches people out. A heading you typed into a section is your text, so translating the theme does not translate it. Translate & Adapt exposes those under Theme content, alongside the theme’s own strings.
Changing a word
To change wording in a language you have published — including English — use Translate & Adapt, not the theme files. Edits there survive theme updates; edits to a locale file do not.
Adding a language the theme does not ship
Shopify falls back to English for any string the theme has no translation for, so an unshipped language works but arrives partly in English. Translate & Adapt will show you every untranslated string, and filling them in is the supported way to add a language yourself.
Right-to-left languages
Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Urdu are supported at the layout level: the theme is written with logical properties throughout, so it mirrors rather than breaking. The theme does not include translations for these languages — add the language, then translate it in Translate & Adapt.
Troubleshooting
I published French but the site is still English. Check that you published rather than only added the language, and that you are looking at the right URL — Shopify serves the language on a subfolder or domain you choose in Settings → Languages, not on ?locale= alone.
Some words are translated and some are not. The untranslated ones are almost certainly your content rather than the theme’s. See the table above.
The language selector does not appear. It only renders when the store has more than one published language, and when show language is on in the header settings.