How to enable Smart Translations

How to enable Smart Translations

Estimated 4 minute read

Updated Mar 11, 2026, 12:00 AM EST

Table of contents

Enable translation
Manage additional translation settings
Collect preferred language property
Do Not Translate
Translate messages

You must have a paid Klaviyo account to use this feature.

Learn how to enable Smart Translations for messages so you can send campaigns and flows in multiple languages based on the language preferences of your audience. Klaviyo can translate email content to 60+ languages.

Localizing your messages is great if you have or plan to expand to an international customer base. Sending emails in each subscriber’s preferred language allows you to reach a wider audience which can increase overall engagement.

Smart Translations uses machine translation and AI to generate translated content, which may contain errors. Review all translations before sending your message.

What can be translated?

The following can be automatically translated:

Text blocks
Labels
Alt text

The following can be manually changed per language:

Links
Images

The following cannot be translated:

Product feed content

Note: If you have Shopify Markets enabled, Static Product Blocks can be automatically localized independently of Smart Translations. A Localize for recipient setting in the product block will dynamically resolve product pricing and currency for each recipient based on their region. Learn more in How to add a product block to an email.

All of this applies to universal and saved content you’ve added to the template.

Supported languages

Klaviyo supports Smart Translations for the languages listed in the table below. We recommend using the BCP-47 code listed next to each language in the Locale property to indicate a profile’s preferred language; however, Klaviyo will respect plain-text values (e.g., English, French) as well.


Language	BCP-47 code
Afrikaans	af
Albanian	sq
Amharic	am
Arabic	ar
Armenian	hy
Bengali	bn
Bosnian	bs
Bulgarian	bg
Catalan	ca
Chinese (Simplified)	zh
Chinese (Traditional)	zh-TW
Croatian	hr
Czech	cs
Danish	da
Dari	fa-AF
Dutch	nl
English	en
Estonian	et
Farsi	fa
Filipino, Tagalog	tl
Finnish	fi
French	fr
French (Canada)	fr-CA
Georgian	ka
German	de
Greek	el
Gujarati	gu
Haitian Creole	ht
Hausa	ha
Hebrew	he
Hindi	hi
Hungarian	hu
Icelandic	is
Indonesian	id
Irish	ga
Italian	it
Japanese	ja
Kannada	kn
Kazakh	kk
Korean	ko
Latvian	lv
Lithuanian	lt
Macedonian	mk
Malay	ms
Malayalam	ml
Maltese	mt
Marathi	mr
Mongolian	mn
Norwegian (Bokmål)	no
Pashto	ps
Polish	pl
Portuguese (Brazil)	pt
Portuguese (Portugal)	pt-PT
Punjabi	pa
Romanian	ro
Russian	ru
Serbian	sr
Sinhala	si
Slovak	sk
Slovenian	sl
Somali	so
Spanish	es
Spanish (Mexico)	es-MX
Swahili	sw
Swedish	sv
Tamil	ta
Telugu	te
Thai	th
Turkish	tr
Ukrainian	uk
Urdu	ur
Uzbek	uz
Vietnamese	vi
Welsh	cy

Some regional variations are supported, however when machine translating, they will use the machine translation language as specified below


Language	BCP47	Machine Translation Language
English (Australia)	en-AU	en
English (Canada)	en-CA	en
English (United Kingdom)	en-GB	en
English (Ireland)	en-IE	en
English (India)	en-IN	en
English (New Zealand)	en-NZ	en
English (South Africa)	en-ZA	en
German (Austria)	de-AT	de
German (Switzerland)	de-CH	de
Spanish (Argentina)	es-AR	es-MX
Spanish (Chile)	es-CL	es-MX
Spanish (Colombia)	es-CO	es-MX
Spanish (Peru)	es-PE	es-MX
French (Belgium)	fr-BE	fr
French (Switzerland)	fr-CH	fr
Italian (Switzerland)	it-CH	it
Dutch (Belgium)	nl-BE	nl

If you add an unsupported country variant to a profile (e.g., fr-DE, de-NL), Klaviyo will ignore the country variant and translate to the supported language variant instead.

Enable translation

Before you can translate content, you must enable Smart Translation in your settings.

Go to Settings.
Select Translations.Settings.
On the Enable translations page, turn on Turn on Smart Translation.Account > Translation.
Under How to determine preferred language, choose the profile property you want to use.Translate messages.

The property you choose tells Klaviyo which language to use for each profile.
Use the property that stores each recipient’s language preference. For example, your account may use an IETF language tag property.
Click Save.Save.

Manage additional translation settings

After enabling Smart Translation, use the left-side navigation within Translations to manage related settings.

Open Do not translate to manage words or phrases that should stay in the original language.Language section, click the Additional languages dropdown and select whichever language you want to use for your content. Repeat this step for each language you’d like to include.
Open Catalog locale mapping to configure fallback locale mappings for product catalog content.Fallback language for when a customer’s preferred language is unavailable or unknown.
Open Glossary to manage approved translation terms and guidance for your content.
Catalog locale mapping is only relevant if you use localized catalog content.Shopify Markets in enabled
Review your changes and click Save.Save.

The exact settings available in each section can vary based on your account setup and integrations.

Collect preferred language property

The default method for determining a profile’s preferred language is Locale. In other words, Klaviyo looks at a location property to determine which language to use for the profile. Some integrations such as Shopify (via Shopify Markets) and Prestashop automatically populate the Locale property with location information for customers.

You can also collect a preferred language directly from customers. The Language property on someone’s profile does not have a value by default, but one can be collected using several different methods.

When setting the locale property, we recommend using BCP-47 codes (e.g., en-GB, es-ES). Alternatively, you may use a country or language (e.g., English, France), but BCP-47 codes offer more control and dialect precision.

Profiles that don’t have a Language property set will receive the original language of the email. For product feeds in Smart Translations, profiles that don’t have a Country property set will receive product data selected in the Catalog locale mapping.

Do Not Translate

The “Do Not Translate” feature allows you to specify a list of terms, brand names, or phrases that should be excluded from machine translation.

When a machine translation is performed, any term added to this list will remain in the original language, ensuring consistency and brand integrity across all translated content.

You can manage your list of terms in your account settings: Account Translation Settings.