Translating Metafields, Possible Issues, and Troubleshooting
Hextom: Translate & Currency can be used to translate fields that are categorized as "translatable" by Shopify. This includes Metafields, which, by Shopify definitions:
help you to customize the functionality and appearance of your Shopify store by letting you save specialized information that isn't usually captured in the Shopify admin. You can use metafields for internal tracking, or to display specialized information on your online store in a variety of ways. For example, a candle seller might want to display a burn time for candles on their product pages, whereas a grocery store might want to display a product expiration date for canned goods.
On this page, you can learn:
- How to translate metafields, and where to find them
- Possible Issues when translating metafields
- How to troubleshoot these issues
Translating Metafields
The app is able to translate metafields by default with the AI Translation.
If you would like to use Manual Translation instead, here are some pointers about metafields:
Metafields are listed in the app in this order [metafield-namespace.key.metafield_type]. For reference:
- Product, Variant, Collection, Blogs, and Pages metafields can be found on their respective categories.
- 3rd Party apps that has metafields would be in the Shop & Metafield category. If the store uses a particular metafield to manage all product option values, this can be found here.
If a metafield is used in place of a product description...
This field is required to be detected by the theme, in order to reference the information saved; this makes this particular field located in the theme category, in addition to the product category. When translating, the namespace.key must be the same. See image below:
Possible Issues
Metafields, if used as a way to display or reference information by the theme, the translation field must always match the namespace.key. Having this namespace and key translated will cause the theme to not match this in the translated page, and will not show the value of that metafield.
- Certain metafields from other apps must not be translated. This is because the value of this metafield is vital to the app's performance, or this is connected to a specific configuration, and having this translated will affect the store negatively.
One example is an app called Upcart, where if you translate a specific metafield, it will cause the cart drawer to not close. For further reading, check out this article How-to-fix Cart Drawer Issue with Upcart
Troubleshooting
Does not Display
If a metafield is used by the theme to reference information, and it does not appear, like the image below:
Check the product metafield related to the product. If you are unsure which category is this, we suggest the use of our Keyword Search. Using the value of the material as keyword, we observe the metafield namespace and key:
Substituting the word "Material" in the keyword search will give us a match. In particular, we are looking for the field where it is used by the theme, or in the app, is also called online store theme:
We see that a result is this metafield, where it is translated. If you would look closely, notice that the metafield is not identical. What happens is that, due to the translation, the theme cannot match the correct metafield, and as such, does not display the information required.
- We suggest either removing the translation, or place the identical metafield in the translated input box.
Incorrect Value
If a value is showing incorrectly, we suggest to create a scan to the store/language, as it may be possible that the translation or metafield information is outdated, and must be updated manually or with a translation task.
If the issue still persists even after updating the metafield value, and also scanned to update these changes, please let us know via help@hextom.com