The hardest part about building a Magento multi-language store is translation. You have to localise your entire store to make shopping easier for your global customers. Starting with translating products, as the most important pages.
However, to help people navigate your catalogue more easily, you have to translate Magento categories next.
So, in this guide, you'll learn multiple ways to do that manually, automatically and in bulk with the help of AI.
Category Translation in Default Magento
Same as with products, you don't have to create an entirely new category to translate it. You just need to go to Catalog > Categories and switch to a corresponding store view to add all translations.
Then just remove the checkmark and set the translated values of this or that attribute. You can translate category names, content, and metadata here.
Translate Magento Categories via Translation Tool
Default category translation in Magento requires that you go to each store view to translate a category. While not a problem for 2 or 3 languages, the process is still quite time-consuming.
That's when you're going to need some help, like the .
It's a faster, more reliable and effective way to scale your Magento translations. It comes with a variety of options to help you translate Magento categories faster or without you doing anything at all.
Let's go through each of them.
Translation Popups and Forms
Sometimes switching between the store views to compare or double-check the translations takes longer than the translation itself. Magefan Translation Tool fixes that with the translation pop-ups and forms.
They allow you to translate categories in Magento without switching the store view.
Popup
If you want to translate some separate fields like category name, description or SEO data, click the Translate button under a corresponding field.
Once you click on it, a translation pop-up appears with a particular field from all store views. This simplifies the editing and allows you to add translations for all languages at once.
As a bonus, this option also allows you to edit category attributes across all store views at the same time.
Form
To take the game one step further, you can compare, edit and translate all category fields in one single form. For that, find the Translate button in the top category menu.
It opens a separate form with all options available for translation and editing, including some category attributes.
Auto-Translations
Translation popups and forms are a huge step forward for manual translation. But it's still not an option for large catalogues.
In that case, Magefan offers you to configure one of three popular AI engines, like Google Translate, and set up the auto translations.
Once you do that, you'll get one more option in the category top menu — Auto Translate. Just hit that to translate Magento categories for all store views at once.
Translation schedule
Don't have time to go through categories and click Auto Translate? No problem. Just configure the translation schedule for categories, and Magefan translator will go through all the categories on its own.
The best part? It won't only translate categories once. It'll update the translations if you edit any content in the original category page.
Hreflang Tags for Magento Categories
After you translate categories in Magento in a preferred way, there's only one step left. You have to "connect" all translated versions with the hreflang tags.
They tell Google what languages or regions you're targeting, so it pulls out a relevant page in search.
What's more important, without those tags, you might have some problems with language switching. Especially if someone tries to access a page not in their local language.
However, remember that your store's localisation doesn't stop after you translate categories and add hreflang tags for them. You also have to translate Magento CMS pages, blocks and emails to maintain consistency.
