--- title: "How to translate a product catalog CSV for e-commerce" description: "How to translate Shopify, WooCommerce and custom product catalogs at scale, with a plain-English instruction and structure-safe field protection." date: 2026-04-30 updated: 2026-09-20 language: en canonical: https://ai-glot.com/blog/translate-product-catalog-csv-ecommerce source: AI Glot blog --- **The Bottom Line: Translating a product catalog is the single highest-ROI localization task for any e-commerce business: the most efficient workflow is to isolate your translatable fields from your structural metadata and use a glossary-aware engine to ensure your brand's voice remains consistent across thousands of SKUs.** Using the **[best website translation software](/blog/best-website-translation-software)** is the only way to scale this safely. That fear is justified. A product CSV is not a simple document. It is a structured data file where every column has a specific purpose. If your translation process accidentally modifies a SKU, changes a product handle, or shifts a price column, your import will either fail completely or, worse, silently corrupt your store data. The good news: with the right approach, you can translate thousands of products in minutes without touching a single structural field. This guide covers the entire process, from understanding your catalog's CSV structure to writing the right instruction and handling the tricky edge cases that trip up most teams. For an already-translated catalog, the same instruction can target [only the rows that are still missing](/blog/translate-only-missing-rows-csv-excel), so a weekly update never re-pays for last week's work. ## Why product catalog translation matters more than you think Customers buy more when they can read the product page in their own language. That is not a guess: see the research behind **[why website translation is important](/blog/importance-website-translation)** and the **[benefits of multilingual SEO](/blog/benefits-multilingual-seo)** for the numbers. This makes intuitive sense. When a customer in France sees a product description in natural, well-written French (not the clunky machine translation they have learned to ignore), they trust the store more. They understand the product better. They buy more confidently. Yet most international e-commerce stores still rely on one of these approaches: - **English only**, assuming everyone reads English. This leaves conversion on the table in every non-English market. - **Google Translate widgets**, which produce translations that feel robotic and inconsistent. Customers notice. - **Manual translation by freelancers**, which is high quality but prohibitively slow for catalogs with hundreds or thousands of products. A freelancer charging €0.08 per word will bill thousands of euros for a 500-product catalog, and they will need weeks to deliver. The CSV translation approach solves the speed and cost problem while maintaining quality through **glossary-controlled AI translation.** You keep the professional terminology consistency that freelancers provide, at the speed and price point that makes localizing a 2,000-product catalog actually viable. ## Understanding your product CSV structure Before translating anything, you need to understand what you are working with. Every e-commerce platform exports product data slightly differently, but the principles are universal. ### Shopify product exports Shopify's product CSV is one of the most common formats. When you export from **Products > Export** in your Shopify admin, you get a file with roughly 25-30 columns. Here is a simplified view of the ones that matter: | Handle | Title | Body (HTML) | Vendor | Type | Tags | SEO Title | SEO Description | Variant SKU | Variant Price | Image Src | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | premium-leather-bag | Premium Leather Bag | `

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` | BrandCo | Bags | leather, premium | Premium Leather Bag | Discover our... | PLB-001 | 149.99 | cdn.shopify.com/... | The critical distinction: **Translate these columns:** - `Title` - what the customer sees as the product name - `Body (HTML)` - the full product description, often with HTML formatting - `SEO Title` - what appears in Google search results - `SEO Description` - the meta description shown in search results For these fields, follow our **[SEO website translation guide](/blog/seo-website-translations)** so you capture local search intent from the start. **Never translate these columns:** - `Handle` - the URL slug (`premium-leather-bag`), used for routing and links - `Vendor` - a brand name, usually a proper noun - `Variant SKU` - your inventory reference code - `Variant Price` - a number, not text - `Image Src` - a URL to a hosted file - `Tags` - used internally for filtering and may be referenced by your theme logic - `Type` - often used for collection filtering ### WooCommerce product exports WooCommerce exports are similar in spirit but use different column names. The key translatable fields are `post_title`, `post_excerpt` (short description), `post_content` (full description), and the `meta:_yoast_wpseo_title` / `meta:_yoast_wpseo_metadesc` fields if you use Yoast SEO. ### Custom platforms If you are on a custom e-commerce platform, the column names will be unique to your system. The principle stays the same: **identify the human-readable text fields and separate them from the machine-readable structural fields.** ## The translation workflow, step by step ### Step 1: Export your product catalog Export your products as CSV from your e-commerce platform. For Shopify, this is **Products > Export > All products > CSV for Excel/Numbers**. For WooCommerce, use a plugin like WP All Export. **Pro tip:** If your catalog has more than 5,000 products, consider exporting in batches by collection or product type. This keeps each file manageable and makes quality review easier. ### Step 2: Upload and describe the job in one sentence Upload the CSV to [AI Glot](https://ai-glot.com). The platform will analyze the file structure automatically. For product catalogs, **name your translatable columns in plain English and leave the rest unmentioned.** This is exactly the case AI Glot is built for: files where only a subset of columns contains translatable content. *Illustration: AI Glot reads the file and separates the text from the structure before anything is translated.* Once you name your translatable columns, review the plan AI Glot shows you before it runs. Naming the exact columns is what makes this approach safe: there is **zero chance** of accidentally translating a SKU or a price because those columns are never included in the translation process. ### Step 3: Set up your glossary For e-commerce catalogs, glossaries are not optional. They are essential. Here is why: if you are translating 500 products in the "Athletic Footwear" category, the AI might translate your brand's "AirFlow Technology" differently across products. In one product it might say "Technologie AirFlow," in another "Technologie de flux d'air." A customer browsing multiple products will notice this inconsistency, and it undermines trust. Set up glossary entries for: - **Brand names** - "BrandCo" stays "BrandCo" - **Product line names** - "AirFlow Series" stays "AirFlow Series" - **Technical specifications** - units like "mAh" or "W" that should stay in their original form - **Material names** that your brand has standardized - if you always call it "vegan leather" rather than "faux leather," make sure the translation reflects that preference A well-built glossary for an e-commerce catalog typically has 20 to 50 entries. The time investment is small (maybe 15 minutes to set up), but the consistency improvement across hundreds of products is significant. ### Step 4: Review the cost estimate and launch AI Glot shows you the total word count and credit cost before you commit. For a typical Shopify catalog: - **500 products** with Title + Body + SEO Title + SEO Description - Average **80 words per product** across those fields - Total: approximately **40,000 words** - Cost: **40,000 credits** in Standard mode That is well within the Pro plan's 40K monthly credit allowance, meaning you can translate an entire 500-product catalog for the cost of a single month's subscription. Compare that to a freelance translator at €0.08/word: the same job would cost **€3,200** and take 2-4 weeks. ### Step 5: Download and re-import Once the translation completes, download the CSV. Open it in a spreadsheet app for a quick sanity check: - Are the SKUs unchanged? - Are the prices still numbers? - Do the translated titles read naturally? - Are your glossary terms consistent? Then import the translated CSV back into your e-commerce platform. Shopify handles this through **Products > Import**. WooCommerce uses the same export/import plugin. *Illustration: One file comes back, in the format it arrived in.* ## Handling product variants Product variants (sizes, colors, materials) deserve special attention because they create **multiple rows per product** in the CSV. In Shopify's export format, the first row for a product contains the Title and Body, while subsequent rows for the same product contain only the variant-specific data (size, color, price). The Title and Body cells are empty for variant rows. This means naming Title and Body in your instruction naturally handles variants correctly: AI Glot translates them in the first row and leaves the empty cells in variant rows untouched. The variant-specific fields (Size, Color) might or might not need translation depending on your setup, so check the plan carefully. ## Handling HTML in product descriptions Most e-commerce product descriptions contain HTML formatting: headings, bullet lists, bold text, and sometimes embedded images or videos. AI Glot processes HTML content while preserving the markup structure. Your `