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Customei lets you translate every customer-facing string in an option set — field labels, help text, dropdown values, validation messages — into any locale you sell in. On the storefront, Customei picks the right translation based on the customer’s Shopify locale.

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What gets translated

Translation covers everything a customer reads on the product page:
  • Field labels — e.g. “Your name” → “Tên của bạn”.
  • Help text / descriptions — longer guidance under a field.
  • Dropdown and select values — e.g. “Gold” / “Silver” / “Bronze” as shown to the customer.
  • Swatch labels — the name that appears when a customer hovers a color swatch.
  • Validation messages — “This field is required” in the customer’s language.
  • Button labels inside the widget — “Add to cart”, “Reset”, “Upload photo”.
Design-time labels (the internal field name you use in the admin) are not translated — those are for your team.

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How the locale is chosen at runtime

The storefront widget reads Shopify’s current locale and picks the translation with the matching locale code. The order of preference:
  1. Exact match — customer browsing in fr-CA gets fr-CA translations.
  2. Language fallback — if fr-CA isn’t translated, Customei falls back to fr.
  3. Default locale — if nothing matches, Customei shows your account’s default locale (usually English).
This means you don’t have to translate every regional variant separately. Translating just fr covers every French-speaking customer; add fr-CA only if you need Quebec-specific wording.

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The translation workflow

Each option set has a Translation tab in its editor. Inside, you’ll see a virtualized grid with:
  • One row per translatable string.
  • One column per target locale.
  • A cell editor that shows the source (default locale) and an editable translation.
You can edit cells by hand, or auto-translate everything in bulk using one of the supported providers — see Translate an option set.

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Supported providers

Customei integrates with three translation providers:
  • Google Translate — fastest, widely trained, great for common languages.
  • Google Gemini — context-aware, better for brand tone and longer strings.
  • OpenAI — strong general quality, useful when Gemini is unavailable.
Providers are called on-demand from the Translation tab; they don’t run automatically on every save. You’re in control of when to spend credits on a translation run.

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When to use translations

  • Always, if you sell in multiple countries with multiple locales. The effort is small, the conversion uplift is real.
  • Not needed, if you only sell in one locale — leave the default English (or whatever your base language is) and skip this section.

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Permissions

Translations are gated by two permissions:
  • translation:view — read-only access to the Translation tab (on by default for Staff).
  • translation:edit — save translations, run AI translation, import/export.
See Roles and permissions.

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