Shopify Allergens Translation on the Product Page, No Liquid

Your storefront is in German. The product title, the description and the buttons are all German. Then a shopper scrolls down and finds “Contains: milk, gluten, hazelnuts” in English, because that is what you typed into a metafield.

This is a common snag when food shops look for a Shopify allergens translation on the product page. Allergen data often lives in a metafield, printed by a hand-written Liquid snippet, with headings typed straight into the theme. The values stay in the language you entered them in. When the food information a shopper needs to read is in the wrong language, the page feels unfinished, and for a shop selling into the EU it also makes that information harder to rely on.

Below is why this happens and how to get the food information onto the page in your store’s languages without touching theme code.

Why allergens stay in English on a translated storefront

EU food law cares about language. Article 15 of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 says mandatory food information has to be in a language easily understood by consumers where the food is sold, and a member state can require its own official languages. Our guide to EU allergen information for online food shops covers the rules in more detail.

On a multilingual store, the trouble is usually how the allergen text gets onto the page:

• Headings typed into the theme. If “Nutrition” and “Ingredients” are written directly into a Liquid snippet, they print the same words in every language.
• Values in a custom metafield. The text is output exactly as stored. Whether it can be translated depends on how the field and the snippet were set up.
• An image of the label. Text inside a picture can’t be translated at all, and shoppers can’t search or copy it.

The usual workarounds are awkward too: one metafield per language (allergens_de, allergens_fr) plus Liquid to pick the right one, or a separate copy of the table for every language. Each adds theme code to maintain, and each needs another round of work when you add a language or change theme.

What Etiketto: EU Nutrition Labels does about it

Etiketto: EU Nutrition Labels is a Shopify app that shows the food information Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 requires on your product pages: a nutrition table, ingredients with allergens in bold, and the operator. For language, two things matter:

• The label wording comes in 10 languages. The fixed text of the block, such as the headings and row names of the nutrition table, comes in 10 languages, including German, French and Dutch, so you don’t write or translate it yourself.
• Your own text can be translated. The text you enter per product, such as the ingredient list, can be translated into any published store language.

The block renders plain HTML text, not an image, so search engines, screen readers and translation tools read it like the rest of the page.

How to set it up for a non-English storefront

1. Publish your languages in Shopify. Add and publish the storefront languages you sell in, for example German and French. The app reads your store’s published languages.
2. Fill in one label per product. Open the product in the Etiketto editor and enter the nutrition per 100 g, the ingredients and the operator details. The values come from your own specification or lab results; the app does not calculate them.
3. Mark the allergens. Wrap each allergen in asterisks in the ingredient list, for example Haferflocken, Honig, *Butter* (*Milch*). The marked words show in bold. The app does not detect allergens, so only the words you mark are emphasised, in every language you write them in.
4. Translate your own text. Add the translated ingredient list and other text for each published language, and mark the allergens with asterisks there too. To check a translated list, the free EU allergen checker reads English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Dutch.
5. Add the block to your product page. In the theme editor, open the Product template, add the Food information block and pick a layout: table, accordion, compact or card. It needs an Online Store 2.0 theme and no theme code changes.
6. Check each language on the storefront. Switch the storefront to German, then French, and read the label as a shopper would. Ask a native speaker to check the ingredient wording, especially the allergen names, before you rely on it.

A short checklist

• Storefront languages published in Shopify
• Nutrition, ingredients and operator filled in for each product
• Allergens marked with asterisks in every language version of the ingredients
• Food information block added to the Product template
• Each language checked on the live page against your packaging

This is not legal advice. What you enter decides what the buyer sees, so check the rules that apply to your products and the countries you sell into.

About Etiketto: EU Nutrition Labels

Etiketto: EU Nutrition Labels is an app for food shops selling into the EU. It shows the food information Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 requires on your product pages: a nutrition table, ingredients with allergens in bold, and the operator. You enter it once per product and add the Food information block in the theme editor, with no Liquid edits. The label wording comes in 10 languages, and your own text can be translated into each published store language.

If your German or French storefront still shows allergens in English, install Etiketto: EU Nutrition Labels from the Shopify App Store and set up your first product label.