Day 0: audit
We started by exporting the entire catalog (1,847 products, 92 collections, 31 pages) to measure word count and identify untranslatable boilerplate.
Day 1 – 14: foundations
- Built a glossary of 240 brand and product terms.
- Configured a blacklist for sizing tables (already locale-aware in HTML).
- Picked five priority locales: DE, FR, IT, ES, NL.
Day 15 – 45: bulk translate
Datora's bulk job translated the catalog into all five locales in 11 hours of compute time. Cost: under €400 for the initial pass.
Day 46 – 75: review
Native reviewers cleaned up tone-of-voice issues per locale. Datora's diff history made this trivial – every change was tracked and revertible.
Day 76 – 90: launch
Locales rolled out one per week, monitored via Shopify Markets analytics. Conversion in DE matched English within three weeks.
Result
- Time-to-market: 90 days vs. the 9-month estimate from a traditional LSP.
- Cost: ~€1,800 all-in vs. a €40k LSP quote.
- Ongoing: auto-translate now handles every new SKU within 60 seconds of publishing.