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Do Not Translate Keys

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Do Not Translate Keys

Mark localization keys as Do Not Translate to keep values identical across all languages — for product IDs, brand strings, and required legal copy.

Use Do Not Translate when an entire key should stay identical across languages.

Common examples:

  • Product IDs and SKUs
  • Brand/legal strings that must remain exact
  • Short technical labels that should never be localized

What It Does

When a key is marked Do Not Translate:

  • The string is treated as non-translatable.
  • Localized values are expected to match the base-language value.
  • The table UI shows a Don't Translate badge instead of translation state labels.

Runtime Behavior

For non-base locales, translation regeneration does not produce new translated text for these keys.

Instead, String Catalog keeps the localized value aligned to the base value for the matching key/type/variant.

Reset Actions

For Do Not Translate keys, reset actions are available in the edit flow:

  • Reset Translation (single locale row): restores that row to the base value.
  • Reset All Languages (from the base row): restores all non-base locales to the base value.

These reset actions are only available for keys marked Do Not Translate.

Quality and Health Checks

Do Not Translate rows are treated as valid by quality workflows and can be marked with perfect quality status.

Do Not Translate vs Protected Terms

Use the right tool for the job:

  • Do Not Translate: lock the entire key/value.
  • Protected Terms (Glossary): lock specific words/phrases inside otherwise translatable strings.

If you only need to preserve specific tokens in a sentence, use Protected Terms instead.

Troubleshooting

If you still see unexpected localized text:

  1. Confirm the key is marked Do Not Translate.
  2. Run reset on that row (or reset all languages from the base row).
  3. Re-run sync so downstream files reflect the normalized value.