Goal: Export your Shopify product translations to a Google Sheet, fill them in with the GOOGLETRANSLATE function, and import the results back into your store. This is much faster than clicking through every field in Translate & Adapt, and it covers metafields too. The same sheet can be reused whenever you add new products or launch a new language.

Video walkthrough: Watch the step-by-step video

Prerequisites:

In the Altera app, go to Settings in the left menu, scroll down to Remote connections, and click New connection. Select Google Sheets as the connection type, then click Connect Google account and grant Altera permission to create spreadsheets on your behalf.

Note: Altera only requests access to files it creates, not your full Google Drive.

In your Shopify admin, open the Products page and select the products you want to translate. Click the three dots above the product list and choose Export selection with Altera.

Altera opens with a pre-configured export for the selected products.

In the Altera export configuration:

Scroll down to Export Location and choose the Google Sheets connection you created in Step 1. Click Start export.

Altera exports all the product fields and metafields, then publishes them to a new Google Sheet. When the job completes, click View sheet to open it.

The exported sheet is compatible with the Translate & Adapt import format and includes a few extra helper columns:

The Translated Content column starts as a copy of the default content. You'll replace its values with your translations.

In the first row of the Translated Content column, enter a formula referencing the Default Content cell, the source language code, and the target language code:

Replace I2 with the cell reference for Default Content, "en" with your source language code, and J2 with the cell reference for the locale column (or hard-code the target language code, like "fr"). Press Enter, then drag the formula down to fill the rest of the column.

Tip: Always spot-check automatic translations. Machine translation can miss context or product-specific terminology, so review key fields like titles and descriptions before importing.

Once the translations look good, go to File > Download > Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) to save the file locally.

In Altera, click New import and upload the downloaded file. Review the file analysis to confirm the data type is detected as Translations, then click Start import.

Altera applies your translations to the matching products and metafields in Shopify. From the import job's detail page, you can click any product to open it directly in the Translate & Adapt app, where you'll see the translated titles, descriptions, and metafield values for your target language.

The same sheet works for ongoing translation work: