Translation Glossary

The glossary is a per-language dictionary of terms that must translate in a specific way - brand names, trademarks, product SKUs, industry vocabulary, technical terms. When machine translation runs, these terms are extracted, protected from the MT engine, and re-injected with your pre-approved translations so provider-specific quirks (DeepL deciding your brand name is a common noun, Google inventing an overly literal German translation) can’t break your tone or compliance.

When to use it

  • Brand & product names that should stay identical across languages ("Acme") or use specific localisations ("Apple" → "Apple" in most languages but "苹果" in Simplified Chinese).
  • Legal / compliance phrasing where the exact wording is regulated.
  • Industry vocabulary where MT engines tend to pick the wrong sense (e.g. "router" in networking vs. woodworking).
  • Internal terminology that shouldn’t be translated at all (product codes, UI labels, internal tool names).

Adding terms

At PerfLocale → Glossary, click Add Term. Fields:

  • Source - the term in your default language.
  • Target language - pick which language this rule applies to. Repeat for each target language that needs a specific translation.
  • Translation - the exact target text (required). To keep a brand or term identical across languages, enter the same value as the source term.
  • Case-sensitive - off by default; turn it on for brand names or SKUs that must match exact casing.

Terms apply to machine translation only; human translators see a glossary hint in the editor but aren’t blocked from deviating.

Browsing large glossaries

The Glossary list paginates at 20 entries per page by default. Open Screen Options (top-right of the page) to change Glossary terms per page — the value is saved per-user and persists across sessions. Pagination preserves your active search query, so navigating from page 1 to page 2 of a search result keeps you in the filtered view.

Enabling MT integration

Toggle Settings → Addons → Machine Translation → Glossary Integration. When enabled:

  1. Before sending text to the MT provider, PerfLocale masks every glossary term (replaces it with a per-call randomised placeholder like [[GL-<random>-0]]).
  2. MT provider translates the surrounding content only.
  3. After the response, PerfLocale swaps the placeholders back for your pre-approved translations.

This works across all supported MT providers (DeepL, Google, Microsoft, LibreTranslate, External Agency, and the WordPress AI Client). It also works with DeepL’s native glossary API when you supply a DeepL glossary ID - PerfLocale passes it through.

Programmatic access

Add / query / remove glossary terms at scale via the Glossary methods in the Developer API, or move the whole glossary in/out as RFC 4180 CSV via WP-CLI:

# Round-trip the glossary as CSV (notes, language pair, case-sensitive flag preserved)
wp perflocale glossary-export-csv /tmp/glossary.csv
wp perflocale glossary-import-csv /tmp/glossary.csv             # additive
wp perflocale glossary-import-csv /tmp/glossary.csv --replace   # wipe then load

For one-off term inserts, use the Developer API's Glossary class directly from PHP - it's the same surface the admin UI uses.

← Back to Docs