You may notice that a product, collection, or page has no SEO description showing up in T-Lab for the translated language, even though AI Translation has already run and everything else on the product was translated correctly. In most cases, this isn't a translation problem - the Meta description field was simply never filled in on the original language, so there was nothing for Translation Lab to translate.
✅ Note: meta_title and meta_description are available for translation on Products, Collections, Pages, Articles, and Blogs - any resource that has a Search engine listing section in Shopify.
The problem
You translate your store, but when you check a product in T-Lab, the SEO title & description are missing - even though the product title, body, and everything else are translated correctly by the task.
Why this happens
meta_title and meta_description will only be translated if the fields actually exist for that product, page, collection, article, or blog in the first place. They exist only if you've explicitly added them - by typing something into Page title or Meta description in the Search engine listing section.
If a field has never been touched and is sitting at its empty default, Shopify doesn't expose it for translation at all - there's nothing there for Translation Lab to see, so it stays empty on the translated language too.
This is expected behavior, not a bug. Translation Lab translates existing text - it doesn't write new SEO copy from scratch.
⚠️ Fix: Check the Search engine listing section on the original-language version of the product/collection/page in Shopify admin first. If Meta description is blank there, that's the cause - fill it in on the original language, then re-run translation.
How to fix it
In Shopify admin, open the product, collection, or page in question and make sure you're viewing the original language.
Scroll down to Search engine listing.
Fill in Meta description (and Page title, if that's also blank), then save.
With the fields now filled in on the original language, they're ready to be translated:
Once we've added and saved, then we head back to the translations of that product:
Once the fields are showing up in Translation Lab like this, you can translate them either way - manually, by typing the translation directly into the field on the right, or by running an AI Translation task for that resource, the same as any other field.
If you use a third-party SEO app
You may set your Page title and Meta description through a third-party SEO app instead of typing them directly into Shopify's Search engine listing section. Whether Translation Lab can see and translate that content depends entirely on where the SEO app saves it:
If the SEO app writes to Shopify's native meta_title / meta_description fields (via Shopify's Translations API), Translation Lab can read and translate them normally - no different from typing them in directly.
If the SEO app instead stores its own title/description in a custom metafield that isn't mapped to Shopify's native SEO fields, Translation Lab has no visibility into that content and can't translate it. This can look identical to the empty-field issue above, but the fix is different - re-running translation won't help, because the source text isn't in a field Translation Lab can see at all.
To check which case applies: check whether your SEO app writes into Shopify's native Search engine listing fields or into its own separate metafield. If you're not sure, your SEO app's own support team can confirm this.
If you're choosing an SEO app and want your titles and descriptions to be translatable, we recommend one that saves natively to Shopify's SEO fields - Smart SEO is a good option for this, since it stores directly in Shopify's native meta_title / meta_description, keeping it fully visible and translatable in Translation Lab.