Fix "Translation missing" Text on a Shopify Store

The problem

A merchant asked about this on the Shopify Community, and the error looks scarier than it is.

They run an Estonian store on the Horizon theme. In their collection filters, the price range box showed something odd. Instead of a clean "0 to 40" between the two price inputs, it printed raw text: Translation missing: et.fields.separator.

They had already translated most of the store. They could not find a way to fix this last bit. There was no auto-translate button for them, and they could not locate the field by hand.

A Shopify price filter showing Translation missing: et.fields.separator between the two price inputs

I reproduced it on a test store running Horizon with Estonian added. The fix is a single field. Once you know where it lives, it takes about thirty seconds.

What "Translation missing" actually means

Let me explain the mechanism, because it tells you exactly where to look.

Every piece of fixed text in a Shopify theme, the words the theme itself supplies, comes from a translation key. "Add to cart", "Sold out", the "to" between two price values, all of it. Your product names and descriptions are your content. These small connector words are the theme's content.

When your store shows a language, Shopify looks up each of those keys in that language. If it finds a translation, it prints it. If it does not, and the key has no value in that language, it prints the key name preceded by "Translation missing" so you can see what is unset.

So "Translation missing: et.fields.separator" reads like this. The language code is et, which is Estonian. The key is fields.separator. That key is the small separator shown between the minimum and maximum values in the price range filter. In English it is the word "to". In Estonian it had no value, so the theme printed the key name instead.

Nothing is broken. One theme string simply has no Estonian translation yet.

Why this one slipped through

This is worth understanding so you can catch the others.

Themes ship with a set of built-in languages. Horizon, like most themes, ships English and a handful of major languages, but not every language on earth. Estonian is not one of the built-in sets. So when this merchant added Estonian, the theme had no ready-made Estonian text for its own strings. Those had to be translated, either automatically or by hand.

Most of them were. But fields.separator is a relatively new key, and a new key added in a theme update does not appear in a translation set that was created earlier. It sits there empty. Auto-translate would fill it, but the merchant could not run auto-translate, so it stayed empty and showed the raw key.

This is the normal life of theme translations. It is not a bug in your store. It just needs the one value typed in.

It is theme text, not the app

One quick but important distinction, because it sends people to the wrong screen.

In the same filter box, the filter names themselves, "Availability" and "Price", are set in the Search & Discovery app, not in the theme. If those are in the wrong language, you fix them there.

The separator is different. It is theme text. So Search & Discovery cannot touch it, and neither can editing your products. It lives in the theme's translations, and that is the screen we are going to.

The fix, step by step

You will use Shopify Translate & Adapt, the free translation app that ships with Shopify. You do not need the auto-translate button, and this does not count against any translation limit, because you are filling a single field by hand.

Step 1. Open Translate & Adapt for your language

Go to Settings, then Languages. Next to the language with the problem, click Translate. That opens Shopify Translate & Adapt with that language selected. You can also open it from Apps, then Translate & Adapt, and pick the language at the top.

The Shopify Translate & Adapt home screen with Estonian selected

Make sure the language shown at the top is the one you are fixing.

Step 2. Open Default theme content

Scroll down the list of content types to the Theme group.

Open Default theme content. This is where all of the theme's own fixed text lives, grouped into categories like Accessibility, Products, and Fields.

Step 3. Find the Separator field and fill it

In the left list of categories, open Fields.

You will see one entry, Separator. Its English reference value is "to", and the box for your language is empty. That empty box is the whole problem.

Type your language's word into it. For Estonian, "kuni" works, or a simple dash. Then click Save.

The Fields category in Translate & Adapt with the Separator field being given an Estonian value

That is it. Refresh a collection page on your storefront. The "Translation missing" text is gone, and the filter now reads something like "0 kuni 40".

Clear the rest while you are there

If one key was missing, others may be too. The same screen fixes all of them.

Under Default theme content, any category can have empty boxes for your language. Those are the strings that will show "Translation missing" or fall back to English on your storefront. Go through the categories that matter to your shoppers, Products, Accessibility, and so on, and fill the blanks.

If your plan offers the Auto-translate button on that screen, it fills every empty box in the category in one click, then you tidy up anything that reads awkwardly. If you do not have that button, you fill them by hand, which is slower but perfectly reliable, and it never hits a limit.

A fast way to find what is still missing is to open your storefront in the affected language and look for any "Translation missing" text or any word still in English. Each one is a key in Default theme content waiting for a value.

The categories most people need

To save you hunting, here are the theme content areas that most often need attention after adding a language.

Fields holds the price separator you just fixed, and little connector words like it.

Accessibility holds screen-reader labels and small controls. These rarely show on screen but they matter for shoppers using assistive tech, and search engines read them.

Products holds buttons and labels around the product and cart, "Add to cart", "Sold out", quantity labels.

Actions and Content hold general interface text used across sections.

You do not have to do all of them at once. Start with what a shopper actually sees, which is usually Products and Fields, then work outward.

What to check if it still shows the error

If you saved a value and the storefront still shows "Translation missing", run through these.

You saved it for the wrong language. Check the language shown at the top of Translate & Adapt. It must match the language code in the error, the "et" part.

You are looking at the wrong theme. Translate & Adapt has a theme selector. If you have more than one theme, make sure you translated the theme that is actually live, or the one you are previewing.

The language is not published, or you are on a cached page. Confirm the language is published under Settings, Languages, then hard refresh the storefront, since browsers cache these pages.

The value did save but reads oddly. Some connector words differ by context. If "kuni" looks wrong to you as a native reader, a plain dash is a safe, neutral choice for a numeric range.

Theme text, product content, app text: the three buckets

Most translation confusion comes from not knowing which of three places a piece of text lives in. Sorting them out saves a lot of clicking.

Theme text is the words the theme supplies. Buttons, labels, the price separator. You fix these in Translate & Adapt under Default theme content. This is where the separator lived.

Your content is your product names, descriptions, collection text, pages, and menus. You translate these in Translate & Adapt too, but under their own sections, Products, Collections, Pages, and so on, not under theme content.

App text is anything an app renders, like the filter names from Search & Discovery, or a reviews widget's labels. These are managed inside that app, or in its own translation area, not in the theme.

When something is in the wrong language, ask which bucket it belongs to first. It points you straight at the right screen and saves you translating the same word in three places hoping one sticks.

The short version

"Translation missing: something" means a theme string has no value in the language it is asking for. It is not a bug. It just needs the value typed in.

Open Translate & Adapt for that language, go to Theme, Default theme content, find the field, type the word, and save. For the price filter separator specifically, it is under the Fields category, and the English value is "to".

I reproduced this on a Horizon store with Estonian, and adding the Separator value removed the "Translation missing: et.fields.separator" text from the price filter.