Google Translate App Translator | Shop translation in 81 languages

About the Extension

A visitor from Poland finds your store through a search engine. Your pages are in German and English. He gets about half of it, scrolls for a moment and leaves. Building a full translation for every market rarely pays off when that market brings in a handful of orders a month.

The problem

Every extra language in Shopware is real work: install the language pack, translate products, categories, Shopping Experiences and email templates, then keep all of it up to date. For your core markets that is money well spent. For the long tail of visitors from countries you never planned to serve, it is effort with nothing to show for it.

The solution

The app places the Google Translate picker in your storefront, right in front of the language selector in the top bar and in the slim checkout header. Your visitor chooses a language and Google Translates the page in their browser. You decide per sales channel whether the picker appears and which languages it offers.

What's in it for you

More languages, zero translation work. Up to 81 languages are available, from Afrikaans to Zulu. You never write a text twice; the translation happens on demand.

Full control per sales channel. The switch "Enable app for this sales channel" is off by default. You enable the app channel by channel and choose the languages for each one. Your trade channel stays as it is, your international retail channel gets the full list.

No call to Google before consent. The app registers its own "Google Translate" entry in the Shopware cookie banner. Google's script loads only once the visitor accepts that cookie. If they change their mind, the page reloads and respects the new choice straight away.

No server, no upkeep. Being an app, it runs without an app server of its own. Install it, set two options, done. That also makes it a good fit for stores in Shopware Cloud.

Visitors stay in the checkout. The picker is available in the checkout as well. A customer who gets stuck in the basket can switch language there instead of giving up.

How the app works

After installation you find the app settings in the Administration under Extensions > My extensions. There are two sections: "Sales channel" with the switch "Enable app for this sales channel", and "Languages" with the multi-select "Languages offered in Google Translate". The sales channel is chosen at the top of the page.

Once the switch is on and at least one language is selected, the picker appears in the storefront. The source language is always the language the visitor is currently viewing your store in. With no language selected, the picker stays hidden even if the switch is on.

To make room in the top bar, the app hides Shopware's own language and currency selectors on screens narrower than 1,200 pixels. On wide screens all three sit side by side.

Typical use cases

A store with stray traffic from across Europe. You sell spare parts in the UK and Ireland, yet enquiries arrive from Poland, Romania and Portugal. Instead of maintaining three language packs, you offer exactly those three languages in the picker.

Testing a new market. Before you build a proper French language with translated product copy, machine translation shows you whether French visitors order at all.

A store with two sales channels. Your trade channel for regular customers keeps the app switched off. Your retail channel with international shipping via Royal Mail or DPD has it on, with a language list that matches where you ship.

Shopware Cloud. You run your store in the cloud and cannot install classic plugins. The app works there without detours.

Technical facts for your IT team

• Shopware 6.7 (compatibility ~6.7.0), delivered as an app with manifest.xml, without an app server and without webhooks.
• No custom tables, no custom fields, Shopware's own tables stay untouched. Settings live in the Shopware system configuration, per sales channel.
• Your store server sends no data to Google. Only after consent does the visitor's browser load the script from translate.google.com; from then on Google processes the page content and the visitor's usual connection data.
• Cookie googleTranslateSix, lifetime 30 days, listed as its own entry in the Shopware cookie banner. Add Google Translate to your privacy policy.
• Translation runs entirely in the browser. It adds no database queries and leaves the HTTP cache unchanged.
• App texts in German, English and Dutch.
• Clean uninstall: the picker and the cookie entry disappear with the app. You decide during uninstall whether your settings are kept.

To be honest

The app does not replace a maintained language. Google Translates by machine and only in the browser, so search engines never see it and you gain no search reach in other languages. Technical terms sometimes come out wrong, proper names such as your store name usually stay as they are, and Google sets the look of the picker. If you use ThemeWare, the top bar has to be switched on in the theme, otherwise there is no place for the picker. For your core markets a real Shopware language remains the better route. For everyone else the app is an honest, quick compromise. Try it on your own store during the trial period.

Legal notice

We accept no liability for legal requirements. Please check the use of this plugin with a qualified legal advisor.