Japanese terminology QA suggests context-inappropriate translations

Crowdin Issues
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1

Japanese terminology QA suggests context-inappropriate translations

In Japanese translation QA, some terminology warnings seem too context-insensitive and often suggest translations that are incorrect or unnatural outside a very specific context.

Examples:

  1. “from” → “次の料金から:”
    This only works in a pricing context, such as “from $10”. However, it is incorrect in many other contexts, such as “from the file {file}”.

  2. “Asset” → “資産”
    In many UI, design, file-management, and localization contexts, “アセット” is more natural than “資産”. “資産” sounds like financial or property assets.

  3. “deleted (verb)” → “削除しました”
    This can be correct as a full sentence, but it is not always usable as a terminology replacement. Depending on the sentence, Japanese may need “削除”, “削除済み”, “削除された”, or another grammatical form.

  4. “is invalid” → “は無効です”
    This can work only when the phrase is used as a complete sentence. As a terminology entry, it is often too restrictive because Japanese may need “無効”, “無効な”, or another grammatical form depending on the sentence.

  5. “new lines” → “新しい行”
    This is context-dependent. In text-processing contexts, “new lines” often means “改行”, while “新しい行” only works when it refers to newly added lines or rows.

  6. Compound words with English terms + Japanese terms
    Japanese UI translations often combine English technical terms and Japanese loanwords without spaces, such as “AIファイル” or “GETリクエスト”.

However, terminology QA may still warn:
“Files (noun)” → “ファイル”
“request” → “リクエスト”

In these cases, the required term is already present in the translation, but it is attached to an English technical term as a natural Japanese compound word. It would be helpful if the terminology QA could recognize these cases or avoid warning when the required Japanese term is already included.

Could you check whether these terminology entries are too broad, or whether the terminology QA check is matching terms too aggressively for Japanese?

2

Hi @coil3569

When the terminology QA check is turned on, it operates strictly by verifying whether the exact translation listed in the glossary is present in your target text. It does not natively understand grammatical context or sentence structures, which is why it flags highly aggressive warnings for flexible terms.

To prevent these false positives, the best approach is to add multiple variant terms to the glossary. By adding both “資産” and “アセット” as accepted targets for “Asset,” and both “改行” and “新しい行” for “new lines,” the system will pass the QA check as long as any of the listed valid targets are detected in the translation.

3

Thank you for the explanation.

That makes sense. I understand that the terminology QA check only verifies whether the exact glossary translation is present in the target text.

In this case, would it be possible for Crowdin’s Japanese glossary entries to include more accepted variants for flexible terms? For example, “Asset” could allow both “資産” and “アセット”, and “new lines” could allow both “改行” and “新しい行”.

Also, some entries such as “from” → “次の料金から:” seem too context-specific to be used as general terminology. Would it be possible to review or narrow such entries?

As a translator, I cannot always edit the glossary myself, so I wanted to ask whether these terminology entries can be adjusted on Crowdin’s side or by project maintainers.

4

Hi there! I’m afraid we cannot change anything in the client’s projects, so we would recommend contacting the project manager and discussing this with them