Translating your recipes into other languages

If your store sells in more than one language, Recipe Kit can show each shopper your recipes in the language they browse in. Recipe Kit sends your recipes and labels to Shopify, you translate them in Shopify's free Translate & Adapt app, and Shopify shows the right language on your storefront.

Automatic translations are part of the Growth plan. Renaming labels in your own language is free on every plan. See Changing the text on your recipe card. Compare plans on the Recipe Kit app listing.

Without Growth, the Translations & Labels section in Settings shows what the feature does and an Upgrade to Growth button instead of the setup controls.

Before you start

You need three things. The setup wizard checks the first two for you.

• A Recipe Kit app block on your theme. Either block works, Recipe Kit or Recipe Kit (Classic). A recipe card pasted into your theme code as a snippet (for example recipekit.liquid) can't read translations and has to be replaced with an app block. See the Installation guide.
• A translation app. Shopify's free Translate & Adapt is the one this article uses.
• A second language, published. Recipe Kit only reports progress for languages you have published in Shopify. See Add a language to your store below.

Add a language to your store

Skip this if your store already sells in the language you want.

1. In Shopify admin, go to Settings > Languages.
2. Click Add language, pick the language and click Add.
3. Click Publish when you want shoppers to see it.

You can translate into a language before you publish it. Shoppers won't see it until it is published.

Set up translations

1. Open Recipe Kit and go to Settings.
2. Expand Translations & Labels.
3. Click Set up translations.

A three-step wizard opens. Work through the steps in order. Click Cancel Setup to close it without turning anything on.

1. Check your theme

Recipe Kit looks for one of its app blocks on your published theme. If it finds one, you see "Recipe Kit is installed on your theme." and the step is done.

If it can't find one:

1. Click Add to theme. The theme editor opens on your blog post template, ready to add the Recipe Kit block.
2. Place the block where you want recipes to appear and click Save.
3. Go back to Recipe Kit and click Re-check.

If you know the block is on your theme but the check misses it, for example because it sits on a template Recipe Kit doesn't check, click Skip and confirm on your storefront that recipes still show.

2. Install a translation app

1. Click Install Translate & Adapt. The Shopify App Store opens in a new tab.
2. Install the app.
3. Go back to Recipe Kit and click I've installed it.

If you already have Translate & Adapt or another translation app that can translate metaobjects, click I already have a translation app instead.

3. Turn on the translation system

1. Click Enable Translations.
2. If Shopify asks you to approve new permissions for Recipe Kit, approve them.

Recipe Kit copies your recipes and labels into Shopify. A progress bar shows how far it has got, for example "Syncing recipes... 12/47". Large recipe libraries take a few minutes. The copy runs in the background, so you can leave the page and come back.

When it finishes, all three steps show a check mark. Hidden recipes are not copied.

Translate your first recipe

Once setup finishes, a Translate your recipes card appears in the section. It closes by itself when Recipe Kit detects your first translation, or click Skip for now to close it yourself.

1. Click Open Translate & Adapt. Later, the Manage Translations button in the same section does the same thing.
2. At the top of Translate & Adapt, pick the language you are translating into.
3. Pick a Recipe Kit entry from the list. Recipe entries are named [RecipeKit] followed by the recipe title.
4. Click Auto-translate, or type your own translation next to each field.
5. Click Save.

Read through what Auto-translate writes before you save, especially ingredient names, cooking terms and measurements, which can differ by region. Shopify lets you auto-translate into at most two languages. Any other language you translate by hand.

Some fields, such as Description, show HTML tags like <p> and <strong>. Keep the tags and translate only the words between them.

You don't have to translate every field at once. Any field you leave empty shows in your store's main language.

What you can translate

Recipe Kit creates five kinds of entries in Translate & Adapt.

You translate each labels entry once and it applies to every recipe. Fields that hold formatted text have "Rich" in their name, for example Ingredients Rich.

For the filter block, see Recipe filter and search bar. For Recipe List headings, see Add a recipe list to any page.

Labels that stay in one language

The labels you set in Customize labels are copied into Recipe Kit Labels and Recipe Kit Nutrition Labels, including the time units, Jump to Recipe and Print Recipe, so each of them can be translated. The Share Image labels are the exception. They are printed on images you make in Recipe Kit, not shown on the storefront, so they keep the wording you set in Settings.

On the Recipe Bar block, leave the button text fields in the theme editor blank. Text typed there overrides the translated labels in every language.

After you auto-translate the labels, the Labels count for a language can also stop short of the total, for example 54 of 56. That is usually fine. Translate & Adapt leaves a field alone when the word is the same in both languages, or when the label is empty in your own language. If it skipped a word you do want translated, open the labels entry, type the translation and save.

How shoppers see translations

Shopify picks the language. A shopper sees a translated recipe when they visit a language URL such as /fr/blogs/recipes/your-post, or when they choose the language in your theme's language selector. Any field that has no translation shows in your store's main language. You don't need to change your theme or the recipe card.

Troubleshooting

I don't see Set up translations

Your store is not on the Growth plan, so the section shows Upgrade to Growth instead. Customize labels below it still works on every plan.

The theme check keeps failing

• Check your published theme, not a draft or duplicate.
• Make sure the blog post template has the Recipe Kit or Recipe Kit (Classic) app block, not a pasted snippet.
• If the block is there and the check still fails, click Skip and confirm on your storefront that recipes show.

The sync has stopped moving

If the progress bar hasn't moved for a while, you see "Sync may be stalled. You can close this and check back later." The sync keeps running in the background, so leave the page and check again later. If the step shows a Migration failed banner, click Retry Migration.

What's next

• Keeping translations up to date covers updating translations after you edit a recipe, checking progress and fixing sync problems.
• Changing the text on your recipe card covers renaming labels in your own language.
• Add a recipe list to any page covers translating Recipe List headings.