Metadata translations are translations of your album's metadata (ie: Artist name, album title and track titles) in various languages other than the primary language that you entered during the album submission process.
Example 1: A user submits an album with English metadata, but then also provides Hebrew metadata translations. Catapult will then deliver both English and Hebrew metadata to Apple Music and iTunes.
Example 2: A user submits an album with English metadata, but then provides Chinese Simplified and Chinese Traditional metadata translations. Catapult will then deliver both English, Chinese Simplified and Chinese Traditional metadata to Apple Music and iTunes.
Metadata translations are extremely complicated as evidence by the fact that there is only one music company that currently supports it (ie: Apple).
At this time, Catapult is able to provide language metadata translations to only Apple Music and iTunes. No other music stores offer metadata translations, so for these store, only a single language can be used for album titles, track titles or artist names.
When Catapult delivers metadata translations to Apple, we deliver both the Primary language metadata AND any additional language translations for that same album that the user provides. We will only accept and deliver metadata translations to Apple for non-latin based languages such as Chinese, Hebrew*, Greek, Russian, etc.
When a user submits non-latin based metadata for their album, our system will automatically request the english translations for the given content. At this time, for all other stores other than Apple or iTunes, we will deliver the latin language based translations that are provided (ie: English, Spanish, etc.) and will not deliver the non-latin based language even if it is the primary language for an album. If this is not acceptable to you, we highly recommend using a distributor based in your own language's local (ie: China, Israel, Greece, etc.) which will allow you to do this.
Once content has been delivered to Apple with metadata translations, customers who then view your album in Apple Music or iTunes will see your album's metadata displayed in the language that is set for their operating system*. If a user's operating system language is set to English, then they will see the English metadata. If the user's operating system is set to Hebrew, then they will see the Hebrew metadata.
*As odd as it sounds, for Hebrew content in the Apple Music / iTunes Store, only English or transliterated English will be displayed to the final customer regardless of a user's operating system language.