Keeping translations up to date

When you edit a recipe or a label, Recipe Kit sends the change to Shopify straight away, but your translations don't change with it. This article shows how to spot translations that have fallen behind, update them, and fix sync problems.

Automatic translations are part of the Growth plan. If you haven't set them up yet, start with Translating your recipes into other languages.

How Recipe Kit stays in sync

Once translations are on, Recipe Kit copies every change to Shopify when you save:

• Saving a new recipe creates a new metaobject in Shopify
• Saving an existing recipe updates its entry in Translate & Adapt
• Saving label changes in Customize labels updates Recipe Kit Labels and Recipe Kit Nutrition Labels

Shopify then marks every translation of a changed field as outdated. Until you update it, shoppers browsing in that language still see the old translation.

Find translations that need updating

On the recipe page

Open the recipe in Recipe Kit. A Translations card at the top of the form shows one badge per language.

Click a badge to open that recipe in Translate & Adapt, already set to that language.

You can also open the recipe in Translate & Adapt from the recipe page's More actions menu by choosing Translate recipe.

After you save changes to a recipe, a banner titled Update translations for this recipe reminds you to update the other languages. Click Open Translate & Adapt in the banner to go straight there.

In Settings

Open Recipe Kit and go to Settings, then expand Translations & Labels. Next to Configured languages, a language badge turns amber and says how many items to review, for example "FR 3 to review".

For the full picture, click View translation details. Each language shows:

• Labels, translated label fields out of the total, or "n outdated" when labels changed after you translated them
• Recipes, fully translated recipes out of the total
• "n need review" when recipes changed after they were translated
• Not published instead of counts when the language isn't published in Shopify yet. Publish it under Settings > Languages in Shopify admin to see its recipe counts

Your main language is marked Source language.

The line at the top, for example "56 labels · 47 recipes · updated 12m ago", says when the counts were last worked out. Recipe Kit refreshes them when you open Settings and they are more than an hour old. To refresh them now, click the refresh icon at the end of that line.

If you add or remove a language, a banner says "Your languages changed since these recipe counts were worked out." Click Recalculate.

Update a translation after you edit a recipe

1. Open the recipe's page in Translate & Adapt. Click its language badge on the recipe page, or click Open Translate & Adapt in the banner.

2. Check the language at the top of the page.

   

3. Update each field that changed. Which way depends on how the old translation was written:

   • Translated by Auto-translate. Click Auto-translate. It fills empty fields and redoes fields it translated before that are now out of date.
   • Typed or edited by you. Auto-translate never changes these. Type the new translation yourself. Or clear the field, click Save, then click Auto-translate to fill it again.

4. Click Save.

Here the Description changed, so its old German translation was cleared and saved:

Then Auto-translate filled it with a translation of the new text:

Update label translations

Labels work the same way. After you change a label in Customize labels:

1. Open Translate & Adapt and pick a language.
2. Open Recipe Kit Labels, or Recipe Kit Nutrition Labels for a nutrition label.
3. Update the changed fields with Auto-translate or by typing, then click Save.
4. Repeat for each language.

Recipes need no action when only a label changed.

Re-sync everything

If recipes or labels in Translate & Adapt don't match Recipe Kit, send everything to Shopify again.

1. Open Recipe Kit and go to Settings, then expand Translations & Labels.
2. Click the More actions menu (the three dots next to Manage Translations).
3. Click Re-sync metaobjects.

This sends your current recipes and labels again. Your translations stay where they are. Large recipe libraries take a few minutes.

Turn off automatic translations

1. Click the More actions menu next to Manage Translations.
2. Click Disable translations.
3. Read the confirmation and click Disable.

Your storefront stops showing translations and shows your main language. Your translations stay in Shopify, so you can turn them back on later and pick up where you left off.

To remove everything Recipe Kit created in Shopify, tick Also delete all RecipeKit metaobjects before you confirm. The button changes to Disable & Delete. This deletes your translations too and can't be undone. Your recipes in Recipe Kit are not affected.

Troubleshooting

"Translation permissions were revoked"

Recipe Kit lost the Shopify permissions it needs and has paused syncing. Click Re-enable Permissions and approve the request if Shopify asks. Syncing starts again. If you edited recipes while it was paused, run Re-sync metaobjects afterwards.

"Translations were switched off"

Recipe Kit lost its permissions and turned translations off. Your storefront shows your main language until you turn them back on. Click Re-enable translations and approve the request if Shopify asks.

"n recipes failed to sync"

Those recipes are missing from Translate & Adapt, so their translations can't update. This is usually temporary. Click Retry failed. If the same recipes keep failing, contact support.

A recipe is missing from Translate & Adapt, or has no Translations card

• Check that automatic translations are on in Translations & Labels.
• Check the recipe isn't hidden. Hidden recipes are left out of the sync.
• Open the recipe and save it once. This sends it to Shopify.
• Check for a failed recipes banner and click Retry failed.
• If several recipes are missing, run Re-sync metaobjects.

The counts look wrong

Click the refresh icon in View translation details. If you changed your languages, click Recalculate. If the counts still look wrong, run Re-sync metaobjects.

The storefront shows old or untranslated text

• Check the recipe's badges for Needs review and update the translation.
• Check the language is published under Settings > Languages in Shopify admin.
• Check the translation was saved in Translate & Adapt.
• Visit the language URL, for example yourstore.com/fr/blogs/recipes/your-post, in a private window to rule out your browser cache.
• Make sure the card comes from the Recipe Kit or Recipe Kit (Classic) app block, not the old recipekit.liquid snippet, which can't show translations.

A label stays in my main language

Translate & Adapt leaves a label alone when the word is the same in both languages, or when the label is empty in your own language. Type the translation into the labels entry yourself and save. If the Recipe Bar buttons stay in one language, clear the button text fields on the Recipe Bar block in the theme editor. See Labels that stay in one language in Translating your recipes into other languages.

What's next

• Translating your recipes into other languages covers setup and your first translation.
• Changing the text on your recipe card covers renaming labels in your main language.
• Recipe filter and search bar covers translating the recipe filter.