Glossary

The glossary is a list of terms that get special handling during AI translation and validation. It’s stored at the top level of glotfile.json and edited in the Glossary panel.

Use it for two things:

1. Do-not-translate terms — brand names, product names, code identifiers that must appear verbatim in every language.
2. Forced translations — a term that must always render a specific way in a given locale.

Entry shape

"glossary": [
  { "term": "Glotfile", "doNotTranslate": true, "caseSensitive": true },
  {
    "term": "dashboard",
    "translations": { "fr": "tableau de bord", "de": "Übersicht" },
    "notes": "Always use the product term, not a literal translation."
  }
]

Note: Whether a translation kept a do-not-translate term (or used a forced translation) is always checked leniently — an inflected or compounded form still counts, so Webhooks honors Webhook, German Accounteinstellungen honors Account, and Japanese APIキー honors API. Legitimate translations are never flagged for embedding the term in a larger word. | notes | Freeform guidance (also passed to the AI). |

How it’s used

• During translation: relevant glossary terms for each string are injected into every AI request, so the model knows what to keep verbatim and what to render a fixed way. See How Translation Works.
• During validation: the glossary-violation rule flags any translation that drops a do-not-translate term or doesn’t use the forced translation. See Checks and Validation.

Tip: Only relevant terms are sent — Glotfile matches glossary terms against each source string and includes just the ones that appear — the AI isn’t handed your entire glossary for every key.

AI term suggestions

Instead of building the glossary by hand, you can let Glotfile scan your source strings and propose candidates. Hit Suggest terms with AI in the Glossary view, or run:

glotfile suggest-glossary

The AI looks across your source-locale strings and surfaces brand/product names, acronyms, domain jargon, and recurring terms that look like good glossary candidates. It does not read your code files and does not generate translations for the terms.

Terms already in your glossary are skipped — as are any terms you’ve previously dismissed — so you can run the command again as your catalog grows and only new candidates appear.

Reviewing suggestions

Suggestions sit in a review queue; nothing changes until you act. Each entry shows a rationale note, the number of keys the term appears in, and suggested flags (do-not-translate / case-sensitive / whole-word). From there you can:

• Accept — opens the normal add-term dialog prefilled with the suggestion so you can tweak it (add forced translations, adjust flags) before saving.
• Dismiss — marks the term as reviewed so it won’t reappear in future runs.

Scoping and cost estimation

By default the command scans all source strings. Use these flags to narrow the scope or preview cost before running:

Suggestions use your configured AI provider and model (the same one used for translation).

Batch mode (50% off)

If your provider supports it, you can submit the scan as an async batch job instead of running it live. Batch jobs are processed by the provider’s Batch API at roughly half the cost of a live scan, and typically finish within an hour.

Anthropic is the only provider with batch support today. On any other provider, batch mode is unavailable — glotfile suggest-glossary --batch exits with an error (re-run without --batch for a live scan), and the UI simply hides the batch button.

CLI:

glotfile suggest-glossary --batch

This submits the job and returns immediately. When you want to check whether it’s done and apply the results, run:

glotfile batch

That command lists pending batch jobs; when a glossary-suggestion job is finished it applies the suggestions to the review queue automatically.

UI: when your active provider supports batch, the suggest dialog shows a batch button alongside the normal Suggest button — labelled “Batch ≈ $X (50% off)” once a cost estimate has loaded, or just “Batch (50% off)” otherwise. While a batch job is in flight, a pending-batch banner appears at the top of the Glossary view; once the job finishes an “Apply results” button appears on the banner.

Batch mode does not change what’s scanned (still the full catalog of source strings, subject to any --key, --limit, or --since filters) and does not skip the review step — suggestions land in the same queue and still require you to Accept or Dismiss each one.

Related

• How Translation Works · Checks and Validation · Key Context and Metadata