Guide

Can you trust AI to translate 1,000 product pages?

Translating a store by hand takes weeks. AI does it before your coffee’s cold. The uncomfortable question is what happens when it gets something wrong on a thousand pages at once.

By Bram Sullot, founder of Unlost · 12 October 2026

Letting AI translate your whole store for the first time is a strange feeling. Most of what comes back is better than you expected. The worry is the part you can’t see: which translations aren’t right? One wrong word on one page is a typo. The same wrong word on every page is a problem.

Where it actually goes wrong

Not where you’d think. Long product descriptions are usually fine; there’s plenty of context. The trouble is in the small things.

Names. A candle called “Midnight” comes back as “Mitternacht”, and suddenly your product is called something else in Germany. Short texts without context: is a variant called “Trunk” swimwear or a car boot? Your own vocabulary, translated three different ways on three different pages. And the most frustrating one: corrections that disappear, because the next time the app runs, it happily translates the page again over your fix.

What makes AI translation trustworthy

It isn’t a smarter model. It’s the safeguards around it.

Product names should be recognised and kept exactly as you wrote them, unless you decide otherwise. A glossary should let you settle once how a word is translated, or that it’s never translated, and then apply that everywhere. Short texts, where context is thin, deserve a second look. Anything the system isn’t sure about should land in front of you, in a review list, instead of going live quietly. And when you fix something yourself, it has to stay fixed.

How Unlost handles it

Those five safeguards are exactly what Unlost is built around. Product names stay as written, there’s a glossary per language, short texts get an extra check, uncertain translations go to a review list, and your own edits are never overwritten. You can also choose a formal or informal tone per language and describe your store’s style, so it doesn’t sound like a manual.

One more thing merchants ask about a lot: numbers. Measurements, sizes and prices are never converted. Feet stay feet, centimetres stay centimetres, and your imperial and metric listings stay exactly as you made them. Only the words around them are translated.

Questions

Will AI translate my brand name?

Not in Unlost: product names stay as you wrote them, and you can add any word to the glossary so it is never translated.

Does Unlost convert measurements or prices?

No. Numbers, units and prices stay exactly as in your original text.

Try Unlost on your store

Free for one language and up to 50 products. Paid plans keep every language up to date within a minute of a change.

Install from the Shopify App Store