How to create a Multi-Language Store in Magento [ Tutorial ]

In Magento, a website is a collection of stores, which themselves are collections of store views. These layers, at first sight might look confusing, but they provide you with powerful flexibility when setting up an online business using the Magento e-commerce solution.

A website is made up of one or more stores which share the same customer information, order information and shopping cart.

Stores are collections of store views and can be setup in a variety of ways. Their main function is to provide a logical container that allows you to group related store views together in a website.

Store Views are the actual store instances in Magento. Most stores will have a single store view associated with them. But a store can also have multiple store views, which are typically used for different languages. Therefore, if you wanted to have a store displayed in English and German, for example, you could create the store once and create two different store views for that store.

1. Install Magento language packages

Before starting to create a translation for your webshop, you should visit https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/customer-experience/internationalization-localization.html, to look for the translation package you want. Select your desired language package, get the Magento Connect 2.0 key and install it, using Magento Connect Manager from your admin:

The new language will be uploaded in app folders design and locale, these folders will not overwrite any file you may have. Your data is safe, as this process will only add the unique files relating to new language you want to have.

Once done, follow the next step to create a new Store View and assign this language package to it.

2. Create a new Store View

1. In your Admin Panel, go to System -> Configuration. On the top-left, you can find a box to view and manage the Store as below. Click on Manage Stores option.

2. In Manage Stores page, click on the button Create Store View.

3. In New Store View section, enter your parameters.

• Store: Main Website Store.
• Name: store view name e.g. German.
• Code: fill in code e.g german_view.
• Status: select Enabled to enable the Store View in front-end.
• Sort order: choose an order in the Store View list for this actual store view.

3. Set Locale Option of the Store View

Go to System -> Configuration. On the top-left, in the box to view and manage the Store view, select “German” Store view.

1. In General section, open Locale Options tab. Select the Locale as “German (Germany)” and Save Config. You will have to uncheck the Use Website box, in order to apply your selection.

This is it. The language you selected will be assigned when it will be selected storeview. You should also assign a Homepage and specific static blocks to each storeview.

Make sure to clear the cache before trying to use your new language.

4. Configure language for CMS pages and static blocks

In order to have pages or static blocks translated into different languages, you need to do the following steps:

1. In your Admin Panel, navigate through CMS -> Pages or Static Blocks.
2. Select the page or static blocks that you wish to translate e.g. “Home page”.
3. In the Page Information, select your desired Store View to have it, like the example below:

By assigning “German Store” in the store view option, Magento will know to load this CMS page content only when in the proper store view.

After you’re done with all the changes, flush the Magento cache, refresh the frontend of your site and change the store view to the one you edited to see the result.