onetwo3D now speaks German, French and Spanish. The whole shop — product pages, categories, checkout and order e-mails — is available in all three languages, and our support chat answers you in your own language too.
A big share of our orders ships to the EU, and many of you have been reading product descriptions and ordering spare parts for your Voron in your second language. You shouldn’t have to. Since we switched to all-inclusive EU delivery, translations were the obvious next step to make ordering from Cambridge feel like ordering from a local shop.
What’s new in the shop
Pick your language from the language switcher in the menu, or go straight to onetwo3d.co.uk/de/, /fr/ or /es/. Your choice follows you through the whole shop. Here is what you’ll see in your language:
- Products and categories — titles, descriptions, specs, brand pages and variation options such as colour or size.
- Pages and blog posts — guides, shipping information and the rest of the site.
- Checkout and order e-mails — shipping option labels, checkout notices, your order confirmation, the thank-you page and status e-mails all arrive in the language you ordered in.
- Help centre — our FAQ and knowledge-base articles have their own German, French and Spanish pages.
- Google Shopping — when you find us through a German, French or Spanish shopping search, the listing now leads to the product in your language.
We write to you the way the maker community talks: informal Du, tu and tú. Hobby terms you already use stay as they are — a Hotend is still a Hotend, and Voron, Klipper, Stealthburner or GT2 are never “translated”. Prices, stock levels and your currency work exactly as before.
Chat with us in your language
The chat bubble in the corner now matches the language of the page you’re on, and you can simply write in German, French, Spanish or English. Our assistant answers in the language you write in. It can check live stock, quote shipping to your postcode in your currency and put together a checkout link for the parts you’ve discussed.
When you need a person, press “Talk to a human”. Our small team in Cambridge works in English, so we’ve made the language barrier disappear on both sides:
- You keep writing in your own language — even if you’re on the English version of the site, the chat recognises the language you write in.
- We read your message in English, with your original text one click away, so nothing gets lost in translation.
- Our reply reaches you in your language, whether you’re in the chat, reading e-mail or on WhatsApp.
If you close the chat before we reply, the answer comes to you by e-mail instead. And the hand-over messages, “thank you” and feedback prompts are in your language as well.
Behind the scenes
For the tinkerers among you: we built this ourselves, the same way we’d approach a printer build — test on a spare machine first, then tighten every bolt.
The shop runs on WooCommerce with Polylang, which gives each language its own copy of every page and product. On top of that we wrote our own translation plugin. It uses AI-assisted translation, but the interesting part is everything wrapped around it:
- A glossary and style guide per language. Brand names and community terms are locked, so a nozzle is always a Düse, a buse or a boquilla, and Voron is always Voron.
- Code stays code. Links, HTML and shortcodes are masked before translation and checked afterwards, so a product page can’t break.
- Automatic quality checks. Every translation is compared with the English original: if a number, link or required term doesn’t match, it isn’t published and lands on a review list for a person instead.
- People win. Once we correct a translation by hand, the system never overwrites it.
- Always up to date. The site checks for English text that has changed and updates only those parts. Text that has been translated before is reused, never redone.
- The warehouse only sees English. Our fulfilment, stock and accounting systems keep working with one product per SKU, so your order ships exactly as before.
The chat uses the same idea in reverse: your message is translated into English for us, our reply is translated back for you, and prices, numbers and links are checked on the way. If a translation ever fails, the message still goes through — we’d rather send a reply in English than leave you waiting.
The whole setup was rehearsed on a full copy of the shop before it touched the live site.
A few things stay in English
- Legal pages. Our terms, privacy and returns policies are legal documents and (for now) the English version applies.
- Carrier names and country names in addresses, such as “Royal Mail Tracked 24”, stay as the carrier writes them.
- The occasional fresh update. A brand-new product or a just-edited description can show in English for a short while until the automated translation rune catches it.
Tell us what you think
If a translation reads oddly, or a technical term isn’t what you’d call it at your workbench, let us know through the chat — in your language, of course. We’ll fix it by hand, and that fix stays put.
Viel Spaß beim Stöbern · Bonne visite · ¡Disfruta de la tienda!
