Short answer: Shopify’s Translate & Adapt app lets you adapt content for a market, but only one field at a time in the admin. Altera, a Shopify import/export app, exports the adaptations for a market to a spreadsheet with Locale and Market columns, you edit them in Excel or Google Sheets, and Altera imports them back. This is the bulk workflow for UK and US English, for French that differs between Belgium and France, and for seasonal copy that only one market should see.
What Shopify market adaptations are#
Shopify’s Translate & Adapt app does two things. Translating puts your content into another language. Adapting changes the wording for one market without changing the language. Shopify’s help center uses the example of a “Sweaters” menu title for a United States market and a “Jumpers” menu title for a United Kingdom market. Other common cases:
- Spelling and vocabulary in the same language. “color” and “colour”, “faucet” and “tap”, “sneakers” and “trainers”.
- Regional variants of a translation. French for Belgium that differs from French for France, or Spanish for Mexico that differs from Spanish for Spain.
- Legal and policy copy per market. Returns wording, delivery promises, and consumer-law text that change by country.
- Seasonal and promotional copy. A Thanksgiving announcement bar in October for Canadian customers only.
In Shopify’s data model an adaptation is a translation with a market attached. That is why adaptations live in the Translate & Adapt app and the translation API rather than on the product, and why a spreadsheet tool needs a Market column to read or write them.
Why bulk editing adaptations is hard in Translate & Adapt#
Translate & Adapt is built for editing one resource at a time. You open a product, pick a language from a dropdown, pick a market, and edit each field in the side-by-side editor. That works for a handful of pages. It does not work when you need to apply “colour” across 3,000 product descriptions, or when a translator has sent back adapted copy for a whole catalog.
Merchants asking for a bulk way to manage English adaptations for US and UK markets on the Shopify community forum end up hand-editing Shopify’s own CSV export. The CSV works, but it has no filters, so a large store exports every language and every market at once and cuts the file down by hand.
The spreadsheet Altera uses#
Altera exports translations and adaptations in a long layout: one row per field, per language, per market. The columns that matter for adaptations:
| Column | What it holds |
|---|---|
Type | The resource type, for example PRODUCT, COLLECTION, MENU, or ONLINE_STORE_THEME |
ID / Identification / Handle | Which resource the row belongs to |
Field | The field being adapted, for example title or body_html |
Locale | The language code, for example en or fr |
Market | The market the row is scoped to. Empty means global, applying to every market that uses the language. Market rows appear in exports only when a market filter is set |
Default content | The source text in your store’s primary language |
Translated content | The adapted or translated text for that locale and market |
Command | MERGE to create or update, DELETE to remove |
Exports also include Is Outdated and Updated At, so you can find adaptations whose source text has changed since they were written.
Shopify’s own Translate & Adapt CSV uses the same Locale and Market columns, so the two formats line up. Altera’s product, customer, order, and every other sheet still use the Matrixify-compatible format, so this is one more sheet in a workflow you already know rather than a new app.
How to create UK English adaptations in bulk#
This walkthrough assumes a store whose primary language is English, with a United Kingdom market that needs UK spelling and terms. The same steps apply to any same-language market pair.
- Export. In Altera, click New Export and select Translations. Add a
Marketfilter and choose your United Kingdom market. Adaptations only appear in an export when a market filter is set, so this step is not optional. The store’s primary language is included automatically when a market filter is active, and the export contains every translatable field for that market, one row each. Fields that already have an adaptation show it inTranslated content. Fields with no adaptation yet still have a row, with the English source inDefault contentandTranslated contentempty, so you can adapt them in the same pass. - Narrow the file if you want to. Add a
typefilter to work on products only, aproduct_tagfilter to work on one range, or afieldfilter to touch onlybody_html. Filtering in the export keeps the file small and the import fast. - Edit. Open the file in Excel or Google Sheets. Copy
Default contentintoTranslated contentfor the rows you want to adapt, then find and replace: “color” to “colour”, “sweater” to “jumper”, and whatever else your UK copy needs. Delete the rows you did not adapt before importing. On aMERGEimport, a row with an emptyTranslated contentremoves any existing adaptation for that field, so only rows you filled in should stay in the file. - Import. Click New Import and upload the file. Altera analyzes it first, shows the row count and detected columns, and flags problems before anything runs. Start the import. Each row is saved as an adaptation for the United Kingdom market only. US customers keep seeing the original text.
To verify, open a product in Translate & Adapt, pick English and the United Kingdom market, and the adapted text appears in the market column. Altera’s import results link to the matching section in Translate & Adapt for theme translations.
Other adaptation jobs that become one export and one import#
- Different French for Belgium and France. Export with
locale=frandmarket=Belgium. Edit the rows that should differ, import. Everything you do not change keeps the global French translation. - Copy one market’s adaptations to another. Export the source market, change the
Marketcolumn to the target market’s name, import. - Review every adaptation on the store. Set the market filter to All Markets. The export holds every translatable field for every market, each row with its market name, which is the audit Translate & Adapt cannot produce. Rows with an empty
Translated contentare the fields that market has not adapted yet. - Retire seasonal copy. Export the market, set
CommandtoDELETEon the promotional rows, import. The global translation underneath stays in place. - Find stale adaptations. Filter the export on
Is Outdatedin your spreadsheet to see which adapted fields have had their source text changed since.
Does Matrixify support market adaptations?#
No. Matrixify’s translations sheet is locale-only. It has no Market column and no market filter, so adaptations never appear in a Matrixify export and cannot be created or deleted with a Matrixify import. Altera reads and writes the same Matrixify spreadsheet format for products, customers, orders, and the rest, and adds the Market column and market filter for translations. See the full Matrixify translations and market adaptations comparison for the other differences, including 20 translatable resource types and 13+ export filters.
Frequently asked questions#
What is a market adaptation in Shopify?
A market adaptation is content changed for one Shopify market without changing the language. Shopify’s own examples are a Sweaters menu title for a United States market and a Jumpers menu title for a United Kingdom market. Technically it is a translation with a market attached, which is why it appears in the Translate & Adapt app and in Shopify’s translation API rather than on the product itself.Can I bulk edit Shopify market adaptations from a spreadsheet?
Yes. Altera is a Shopify import/export app that exports the adaptations for one market, or for every market, to a spreadsheet with Locale and Market columns. You edit the Translated content column in Excel or Google Sheets and Altera imports the file back. Each row updates one field for one market.How do I create UK English adaptations on a US English store in bulk?
Export translations in Altera with a Market filter set to your United Kingdom market. The store’s primary language is included automatically, so you get one row per English field for that market, with the US text in Default content. Copy Default content into Translated content, find and replace the spellings and terms that differ, and import the file. Altera saves each row as an adaptation for the United Kingdom market only.Does Matrixify support Shopify market adaptations?
No. Matrixify’s translations sheet has no Market column and no market filter, so adaptations do not appear in its exports and cannot be created with its imports. Altera reads and writes the same Matrixify spreadsheet format for every other data type and adds the Market column for translations.What does Altera accept in the Market column?
A market name such as United Kingdom, the market’s numeric ID, or its full Shopify GID. An empty Market column means the row is a global translation that applies to every market that uses that language.How do I delete market adaptations in bulk?
Export the adaptations for the market, set the Command column to DELETE on the rows you want to remove, and import the file. Altera deletes the adaptation and leaves the global translation for that language untouched. Leaving Translated content empty on a MERGE row has the same effect.Can I copy adaptations from one market to another?
Yes. Export the adaptations for the source market, change the Market column to the target market’s name, and import the file. Altera creates the same adaptations for the second market.See the Altera vs. Matrixify comparison for every difference between the two tools, or the FAQ for more common questions. The translations help article covers every column and filter.
