Symptoms
After activating the French language plugin, switching the user's session language between English/French, doesn't bring the relevant language translation on catalog item / record producer's description field.
Release
Any supported release.
Cause
To get a field translated, it should have one of the following field type, translated_field, translated_text, Translated_html.
The description field of catalog item was set as field type "html" and hence it didn't support the translation. Since record producer extends sc_cat_item, it was also experiencing the transaction issue with description field.
As shown in the following screenshot, with out of the box, we have description field of sc_cat_item table set to field type as "translated_html".
Resolution
Set the field type for sc_cat_item table's "description" field as "translated_html" as in out of the box.