A Translate rule pins one term to one wording. Every time the term appears, your translation is used instead of whatever the translator would have chosen.
Reach for it when a word is ambiguous in the target language and the translator can reasonably pick the wrong side of it. “Order” is the clearest case: in French, a purchase is a commande, while an ordre is a sequence or a command. Both are correct translations of the English word, and only one of them belongs on a checkout page.
Add the rule
- Open the project's Glossary screen and click Add Rule.
- Set What to do to Translate.
- Leave Match on Exact term.
- Put the source text in Term and your wording in Translation.
- Set Language to the language your translation is written in.
- Click Create Rule.
Set the language. This is the step people skip. A translation is written in one language, so a rule holding commande belongs to French. Leaving it on Any language applies that French wording to your German and Spanish pages too.
Term Order
Translation Commande
Language French (France)
Other terms worth pinning, for the same reason:
| Term | Ambiguity you are resolving |
|---|---|
| Order | a purchase (commande) or a sequence (ordre) |
| Free | at no cost (gratuit) or unrestricted (libre) |
| Plan | a subscription tier (forfait) or a diagram (plan) |
| Support | a help desk (assistance) or backing something (soutien) |
| Shipping | livraison and expédition are both defensible, so pick one and keep it |
The first four are cases where one option is wrong for your page. The last is a consistency choice: nothing is incorrect, but you do not want three words for one thing across your site.
One term, several languages
Each rule carries one translation, so a term that needs different wording per language needs one rule per language:
Order -> Commande French
Order -> Pedido Spanish
Order -> Bestellung German
That is three rules with the same Term and different Language values. They do not conflict, because each only applies to its own language.
If you also have an Any language rule for the same term, the language-specific rule wins wherever it applies. See Rule scope and targeting.
When the term is a whole string
If the term is the entire string on the page, such as a button label or a table heading, your translation is used directly and the translator is never called for it. This is exact and immediate.
rule: Translate "Order" as "Commande" in French
page string Order
result Commande
A word on its own like this is exactly where a rule is most valuable, because a single word gives the translator no context to disambiguate from.
When the term sits inside a sentence
The sentence still goes to the translator, which is told to use your wording for that term while it translates the rest.
rule: Translate "Order" as "Commande" in French
page string Your order has shipped
result Votre commande a été expédiée
The instruction is followed in most sentences. On long or unusual ones the translator can occasionally inflect or reorder your wording to fit the grammar around it. If a particular sentence has to be exact, edit that string directly on the Translations screen instead.
Casing
Case sensitive is on by default, so a rule for Order does not fire on order in the middle of a sentence. For a term that appears both as a heading and inside prose, turn it off.
Your translation is used exactly as you typed it either way. Turning off case sensitivity widens which source text matches; it does not change the replacement.
Translating a family of terms
A Translate rule can use a pattern, which is how you handle text that carries a changing value:
Term Page {n1} of {n2}
Translation Seite {n1} von {n2}
One rule then covers Page 1 of 20, Page 2 of 20, and every other combination, with the numbers carried across. The numbering matters, because languages reorder. See Pattern matching.
What it does not do
It does not rewrite translations you already have for sentences containing the term. A whole-string rule applies immediately; a term inside a sentence leaves the stored sentence alone until that sentence is translated again. See How rules are applied.
It does not validate your wording. Whatever you type is what appears, including a typo.