Guide

How to translate Shopify order and shipping emails

A customer browses in German, pays in German, and gets their order confirmation in Dutch. It’s a small thing, but it’s the one email every single buyer reads.

By Bram Sullot, founder of Unlost · 7 October 2026

How Shopify decides which language to send

Shopify remembers the language a customer used when they placed the order. When it sends the order confirmation, the shipping update or any other notification, it uses the translated version of that template, if there is one. If there isn’t, the customer simply gets the email in your store’s default language. No warning, no error: just a Dutch email to a German customer.

Getting the templates translated

Start under Settings > Notifications and check which emails you actually send. For most stores that’s the order confirmation, the shipping confirmation and the shipping update. Shopify’s standard templates are translatable like any other text, so you can translate them in Translate & Adapt or with a translation app.

Then do the one thing almost nobody does: place a test order in another language and read the email that arrives. It takes five minutes and it’s the only way to be sure.

The catch with customised templates

Plenty of stores edit their templates to add a personal thank-you, return instructions or a discount code for next time. That added text sits in the template code, and it can behave like hard-coded theme text: some tools simply don’t pick it up. You’ll find merchants mentioning exactly this in reviews of Translate & Adapt. If you’ve edited a template, test it in every language.

How Unlost handles it

Unlost translates your notification emails together with the rest of the store. With heavily customised templates the result depends on how Shopify treats that custom code, so test one order per language. If anything stays untranslated, write to support@unlostlabs.com and I’ll look at it with you.

Questions

Which language does Shopify use for order emails?

The language the customer used on your store when they ordered, as long as that template is translated. Otherwise your default language.

Are customised notification templates translated?

Standard texts are. Text you added in the template code may not be picked up by every tool, so test a translated order after editing a template.

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