Translation states
What draft, edited, approved and needs checking mean for a translation, and what moves it from one to another.
Every translation in the editor shows its state as a chip. The state tells you who last stood behind the text: Glossa, a person, or a reviewer.
The states
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| not translated | The key has no translation in this language yet. |
| draft | Glossa wrote it and nobody has read it yet. The editor describes it as "A GLOSSA draft. Nobody has read it." |
| edited | A person wrote or changed the text, by hand, by importing it, or by pushing it from a file. |
| approved | A reviewer signed it off. |
| needs checking | Someone flagged it, or an automatic check found a problem. The editor describes it as "Flagged for someone to check." |
A separate stale chip can appear next to any state. It means the source string changed after the translation was written, so it should be read again before anyone approves it.
What moves a translation
- AI translation writes a draft. It only ever fills strings that are empty or still a Glossa draft: a translation you have edited or reviewed is never overwritten by AI.
- Saving a change in the editor makes the translation edited.
- Approve makes it approved and clears any flag. You cannot approve a translation with no text, or one you wrote yourself: "You wrote this one, so someone else has to approve it. Flag it to send it back."
- Flag for a check marks it needs checking. Flagging an approved translation also withdraws the approval, so it drops back to edited. Flagging a draft leaves it a draft.
- A quality check that finds a blocking problem or gives a low score marks it needs checking. Quality checks run on Team and above. See Quality checks.
- A source change marks it stale. A draft is translated again while Auto-translate is on; an edited or approved translation keeps its text and waits for a person.
Approving is a reviewer's job: the Reviewer and Admin roles and the account's Owners can approve. Translators can write and edit translations but not approve them. See Roles and what each one can do.
Flagging AI translations for review
Each AI translation carries a confidence signal. Translations that pass the automatic checks and come back confident can be marked as not needing review, so your reviewers only see the ones worth their time. Everything else is flagged for review. Automatic checks always win: a translation with a broken placeholder, the wrong plural forms, or a glossary conflict is always sent to review no matter how confident it was.
This is the Route AI translations by confidence setting on the project's Checks page. It is available on Team and above and off by default; with it off, Glossa's translations land as draft and are not flagged.
Using states downstream
- In the editor, filter by State (GLOSSA drafts, Edited, Approved), or by Waiting for approval and Needs checking. See Filter the editor.
- When you pull files with the CLI,
min_stateintransglot.jsoncan limit a file tohuman_edited(edited or approved) orreviewed(approved only) translations. See Configuration.