Selling internationally means more than translating your product pages. A WooCommerce store has moving parts — cart, checkout, emails, and dynamic blocks — that all need to speak your customer's language, or you lose them at exactly the wrong moment. Here's what to cover and where stores commonly fall short.
What actually needs translating
- Product content — titles, descriptions, short descriptions, and image alt text.
- Product attributes and variations — sizes, colours, materials (and their values).
- Categories and tags — plus their archive pages.
- Cart and checkout — every label, button, and field.
- Order and account emails — confirmations, shipping, invoices.
- Store notices and messages — "added to cart," coupon errors, stock warnings.
The trap: JavaScript-rendered blocks
Modern WooCommerce Cart and Checkout are built as blocks that render in the browser with JavaScript (via wp.i18n), not as plain server HTML. Many translation approaches that work by rewriting page output miss these, so the product pages are translated but the checkout is stubbornly English. The fix is to also install the relevant WordPress language packs so the JavaScript strings localize too — check that whatever tool you choose does this.
Approaches
Automatic AI translation
A plugin like Gloty translates product content, cart, checkout, and emails automatically, and installs language packs so the JS-rendered blocks localize as well. Fastest path for most stores. Estimate the cost with the translation cost calculator.
Manual / per-product
Plugins like Polylang (with its WooCommerce add-on) or WPML let you translate each product by hand or with assistance. More control, more work — and WooCommerce support is often a separate paid add-on.
Don't forget currency and formatting
Language and currency are separate decisions. Translating to German doesn't automatically switch prices to euros, and number/date formats differ by locale. Decide whether you need multicurrency (a distinct feature) alongside translation.
SEO for a multilingual store
Each translated product needs the same SEO hygiene as any multilingual page: a clean language-prefixed URL, reciprocal hreflang, translated title and meta description, and a language-aware sitemap. Product schema should reflect the translated content too. Verify with the hreflang checker.
A quick pre-launch checklist
- Add a product to the cart in each language and complete a test checkout — watch for any English strings.
- Place a test order and read the confirmation email in each language.
- Confirm attributes and variation labels are translated on the product page.
- Check hreflang and language URLs on a product, a category, and the shop page.