Which language a customer sees, and how to fix translation files

If you have uploaded translations and a customer still sees the survey in English, the cause is almost always which language Fairing is detecting, not the translation file.

Which language the customer sees

Fairing shows the survey in the language of the customer's browser, not the language of your Shopify store, market, or checkout. A customer in Prague whose browser is set to English will see the English survey even if they checked out on your Czech storefront.

If a translation is missing for the browser language, Fairing falls back to your default (English) text.

To test a translation, change your browser's language setting, then place a test order or use the preview. Changing the Shopify market or checkout language alone will not switch it.

Preparing the translation file

• Download the current file from Settings → Translations so you start from the latest set of strings. New questions and response options are added as new rows; existing translations are kept.

• Save as CSV with UTF-8 encoding. If you see odd characters (for example Ã© instead of é) after downloading, that is Excel re-encoding the file on open, not a change to your data. Open the CSV with Google Sheets or Numbers, or use Excel's "From Text/CSV" import with UTF-8 selected.

• Wrap any response option that contains a comma in double quotes, e.g. "Friend, family, or colleague". Unquoted commas split the row.

• Leave the key column untouched; only edit the translated text columns.

Uploading

Upload the CSV in Settings → Translations. If the spinner runs without a confirmation, refresh the page and download the file again to confirm the new strings are present before re-uploading.

Translations and response rate

If a meaningful share of your customers browse in a language you haven't translated, they are seeing an English survey, which lowers completion. Check the browser languages in your analytics and add translations for the top two or three.