Languages and markets

The languages Curio ships with#

Curio’s own interface text — buttons, labels, empty states, error messages, and every string in the theme editor — is translated into 21 languages:

Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Turkish, and Vietnamese.

To use one: Settings → Languages → Add language. The theme picks it up immediately — there is nothing to configure in the theme editor.

Your own content is separate. Product titles, descriptions, page content, and menu labels are store data, and Shopify does not translate them for you. Install the free Translate & Adapt app, or another translation app, to add those. Your curio.* metafields can be translated there too, so a condition grade or a provenance note reads correctly in each language.

The selectors#

Two selectors, both switched on and off in the same two places — the Header section and the Footer section:

• Country/region selector — appears once you have more than one market with a distinct currency, set up in Settings → Markets.
• Language selector — appears once you have more than one published language.

Neither shows up when there is nothing to choose between, which is why you may not see them at first.

Switching language or country keeps the shopper where they are, including any filters they had applied on a collection page. That sounds obvious and is not: dropping filters on a language switch is a common theme bug and a genuinely infuriating one.

Currencies and prices#

Prices render in the market’s currency wherever they appear, including on price tags, in the register table, in the cart, and in the sold archive. Unit prices — £12.50 / 100ml — render anywhere a price does.

Curio’s price tag is built to survive long formats. A price like Rp 1.250.000 or 1 234,56 € fits without breaking the tag, which is worth checking on your own longest price if you sell in several currencies.

Right-to-left#

Curio fully supports right-to-left layouts. Add Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, or Urdu in Settings → Languages and the entire theme mirrors: text direction, the grid, the ledger rules, the offset shadows, the lot-number marks, the cart drawer, and the navigation.

Two honest notes about what that means:

1. The layout mirrors; the words are yours. Curio does not ship RTL translations of its interface. Add the language and translate the theme’s strings in Translate & Adapt, alongside your product content.
2. Mixed-direction content works. A Latin brand name in an Arabic product title renders correctly, because the theme uses logical properties rather than hard-coded left and right.

Markets#

If you sell into several countries, Settings → Markets is where the work happens — domains or subfolders, currencies, pricing adjustments, and which products are available where. The theme follows all of it without configuration.

One thing worth doing for a resale store: check your shipping before you open a market. A one-of-one item you cannot legally or affordably ship to a country is worse than one that is not offered there, and Markets can restrict availability per product.

Dates#

Dates in the theme — the received date on cards, provenance chain entries, the sold archive, article dates — use each locale’s own format. You do not set a format anywhere.

The one date you type by hand is the countdown’s end date, which uses the fixed format 2026-12-31 18:00 regardless of language. That is a field the theme parses, not one a shopper reads.