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Glossary and Protected Terms

BuildBot edited this page Jun 12, 2026 · 1 revision

Glossary & Protected Terms

Glossary

The glossary maps source-language terms to their canonical translations. It is injected into AI prompts so the model uses consistent terminology, and checked by the GLOSSARY_MISMATCH QC rule after translation.

Managing the glossary

  • Tools → Glossary Editor — full-screen editor. Add, edit, delete, and search terms. Supports per-term notes and language pairs.
  • Tools → Quick Add Term — lightweight dialog to add a single term from the main table without opening the full editor.
  • The glossary suggest dock (shown during translation) highlights candidate terms in the current string.

Import / export

Format Use
CSV Simple spreadsheet-compatible export/import
TBX TermBase eXchange — interoperable with CAT tools
JSON Internal format, preserves all metadata

Use Glossary Editor → File → Import / Export to convert between formats.

Term discovery

Tools → Discover Terms runs a heuristic scan over all string pairs to suggest candidate protected terms — proper nouns, identifiers, and recurring capitalised words that appear consistently across the file. Suggestions are shown for review before being added.

Protected terms

Protected terms are strings that the AI must not translate — proper names, game-specific identifiers, item names, etc.

The default list for Starfield localization is protected_terms_starfield_hq.txt in the project root (8000+ terms).

How protection works

Before each AI call, TermProtector replaces all protected terms with unique placeholder tokens (e.g., ⟨PT_0042⟩). After the model returns, the tokens are replaced back with the original terms. This guarantees protected terms pass through untouched.

A combined regex over all terms is compiled once at startup for performance.

Managing protected terms

Tools → Protected Terms opens the protected terms dialog. You can:

  • Add or remove individual terms
  • Load a different terms file
  • Enable/disable protection globally

Tips

  • Keep the glossary for terms that should be translated consistently.
  • Keep protected terms for terms that must not be translated at all.
  • If a glossary term is also a protected term, the protected-terms list takes precedence (the term is passed through verbatim, not translated).

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