How to Translate Shopify Navigation Menus, Filters and Faceted Search for International Stores

Most merchants translating their Shopify store remember products, pages, and collections — then ship to Germany and discover their navigation still reads "New Arrivals," their size filters say "Small / Medium / Large," and their search facets are entirely in English. Those untranslated UI elements are conversion killers: a customer who can't navigate your store won't buy from it.

This guide covers exactly how to translate Shopify navigation menus, filters, and faceted search — including which parts Shopify handles natively, which parts require extra steps, and how to avoid the gaps that most merchants miss.

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Why Navigation and Filter Translation Is Harder Than Product Translation

When you translate Shopify navigation menus, you're not dealing with a single content type — you're dealing with at least four distinct sources of text:

1. Menu link labels (e.g. "Shop," "Collections," "Sale")
2. Filter labels and values (e.g. "Color," "Red," "In Stock")
3. Search result text and facet headings (e.g. "Showing X results for…")
4. Theme system strings (e.g. "Sort by," "Apply," "Clear all")

Each of these lives in a different place inside Shopify's architecture, which is why translating your product catalog doesn't automatically translate your storefront chrome.

For a broader overview of everything involved in going multilingual, see How to Translate Your Shopify Store: The Complete 2026 Guide.

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Step 1: Translate Navigation Menu Labels

Shopify's native translation system (powered by the Translations API) supports menu link labels directly. Here's the practical workflow:

Using Shopify's Built-In Translation Editor

1. Go to Online Store → Navigation and note the names of your menus (e.g. "Main menu," "Footer menu").
2. Go to Settings → Languages and select your target language.
3. Under the Translations section, choose Navigation — you'll see every menu and link label available for translation.
4. Enter translated labels for each link.

This works, but it's slow at scale. If you have a main menu, footer, a mega-menu with nested links, and a secondary utility nav, you're looking at dozens of strings to translate per language — multiplied across every language you support.

Using a Translation App for Menus

Apps that integrate with Shopify's Translations API can batch-translate all your navigation strings in one pass. StoreLingo, for example, covers navigation link labels as part of its store-wide translation flow, so you're not hunting through the admin manually. Once translated, labels are stored natively in Shopify — no JavaScript overlays, no page-speed impact.

One important nuance: nested menu items (dropdowns, mega-menus) are fully supported by the Translations API, so make sure your translation workflow touches those too, not just top-level links.

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Step 2: Translate Filter Labels and Values

This is where most merchants hit trouble. Shopify's storefront filters are built from your product data — specifically from product options, tags, and metafields that you've exposed as filters in your theme settings.

What Can Be Translated

• Filter group labels (e.g. "Color," "Size," "Material") — these come from your product option names and are translatable via the Translations API
• Filter values (e.g. "Red," "XL," "Cotton") — these come from your actual product option values, which are translatable as part of your product data

The Catch with Tag-Based Filters

If you're using product tags as filter values (a common setup with themes like Dawn or Impulse), those tags are stored as plain strings and are not translatable via Shopify's native API. A tag like color-red or fit-slim can't be given a per-language label through the standard translation flow.

Your options here:

• Switch to metafield-based filters — metafields are translatable and give you much cleaner filter labels across languages. This is the recommended approach for serious multilingual stores.
• Use option-based filtering — if your theme supports it, product options (which are translatable) are a cleaner foundation than tags.
• Manually manage translated tag display names — some themes allow you to map tag slugs to display labels in theme settings, but this is theme-dependent and doesn't scale well.

For stores using metafields heavily, How to Translate Shopify Metafields, Metaobjects and Custom Data covers the full workflow in detail.

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Step 3: Translate Faceted Search Text and System Strings

Faceted search UI text — "Sort by," "X results," "Clear filters," "Showing 1–24 of 148 products" — comes from your theme's locale files, not from your product data.

How Theme Locale Files Work

Every Shopify theme ships with JSON locale files (e.g. en.default.json, de.json, fr.json). These contain all the system strings your theme renders. When a customer switches to German, Shopify serves the de.json strings automatically — if that file exists and is complete.

The problem: many themes only ship complete locale files for English, with partial or missing translations for other languages. This means your German store might render "Sort by" in English because de.json doesn't have that key.

How to Fix Missing Theme Locale Strings

1. In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store → Themes → Edit default theme content (or use the Theme Editor's "Translations" tab).
2. Search for filter and search-related strings: "sort," "filter," "results," "showing," "clear."
3. Fill in any missing translations for each language you support.

Alternatively, you can edit the theme locale JSON files directly in the theme code editor — useful if you have many missing strings and want to update them in bulk.

For a comprehensive walkthrough of theme string translation, see How to Translate Shopify Theme Content: Buttons, Navigation and System Text.

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Step 4: Handle RTL Languages in Navigation

If you're targeting Arabic or Hebrew markets, navigation and filter layout requires additional consideration beyond text translation. RTL (right-to-left) languages reverse the visual flow of your navigation — dropdowns, breadcrumbs, filter sidebars, and search bars all need to render correctly.

Most modern Shopify themes handle RTL via CSS logical properties, but it's worth testing thoroughly. See Selling in RTL Languages: Arabic & Hebrew on Shopify for a detailed breakdown, and Arabic E-commerce: Best Practices for Stores Entering the Gulf for market-specific guidance.

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Step 5: Keep Navigation Translations in Sync

Navigation menus change more often than merchants expect — new collections launch, seasonal categories get added, promotional links go live. Every time you update a menu label in English, the translated versions need updating too.

A few practices that prevent drift:

• Audit navigation strings quarterly — compare your English menu against each translated version to catch any untranslated additions.
• Use a translation glossary — if you have brand terms that appear in navigation (a product line name, a proprietary category), lock them in a glossary so they're never incorrectly translated. How to Use a Translation Glossary to Protect Brand Terms Across Your Shopify Store explains how.
• Re-translate on change detection — StoreLingo detects when source content changes and flags only the affected strings for re-translation, so you're not manually tracking what's out of date.

For a broader look at keeping your entire translated store current, see How to Keep Your Shopify Translations in Sync as Your Catalog Changes.

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Quick Audit Checklist: Navigation and Filters

Before you consider your multilingual navigation complete, verify each of the following in a private browsing window with your store switched to each target language:

• All top-level menu links are translated
• All nested / dropdown menu links are translated
• Footer navigation links are translated
• Filter group labels (Color, Size, etc.) render in the target language
• Filter values render in the target language
• "Sort by" dropdown options are translated
• Search result count strings are translated
• "Clear filters" / "Apply" buttons are translated
• Breadcrumb labels are translated
• No English strings appear in otherwise-translated pages

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Putting It All Together

Translating your navigation, filters, and faceted search isn't a single action — it's four parallel workstreams covering menu labels, product option data, theme locale files, and ongoing sync. The good news is that once this infrastructure is in place, maintaining it is straightforward.

Add StoreLingo on the Shopify App Store →

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FAQ

Does Shopify automatically translate navigation menus when I add a language? No. Shopify adds the language to your store but leaves all navigation labels, filter text, and theme strings untranslated. You need to either enter translations manually in the admin or use a translation app to handle them in bulk.

Why are my filter values still showing in English after I translated my products? Filter values that come from product tags are not translatable via Shopify's native Translations API. If your theme uses tags as filter sources, you'll need to switch to metafield-based or option-based filtering to get translatable filter values — or manage display label mappings in your theme settings.

Will translating navigation menus affect my store's page speed? No, as long as translations are stored natively via Shopify's Translations API (which is how StoreLingo and any well-built translation app works). Translations stored natively are served by Shopify's infrastructure with no additional JavaScript or DOM manipulation, so there's no measurable speed impact.