Automations

Automate routine actions by providing a set of custom rules.

Ilya Krukowski avatar
Written by Ilya Krukowski
Updated over a week ago

This feature is available from the Start plan and above.

Automations enable you to set up specific tasks to be carried out automatically when the translation for a selected language is updated, whether through the user interface, API, or integrations. For instance, you could establish a rule to automatically generate machine translations in French whenever the English translations are updated.

Getting started

To get started with automations, open your project and click More > Automations:

Then click Create to add a new automation:

Quotas

The number of available automations depends on your current subscription plan. Automations are counted across all team projects and each language pair is counted as a separate automation.

The number of characters you can translate using machine translation (MT) is also limited and displayed in the top right corner of the automations page (check the screenshot above). The MT characters limit counter resets on the first calendar day of every month.

If you exceed the automation limits then automations will be disabled and will no longer be triggered. Machine translations also won't be run if the MT character limit is exceeded.

Subscription plan

Available automations

MT character limits

Free

0

0

Legacy

10

10,000

Trial

150

10,000

Start

25

250,000

Essential

50

500,000

Pro

100

1,000,000

Enterprise

Custom (start at 150)

Custom (starting at 1,500,000)

Please contact our support to learn more.

Creating automations

Automation options

After clicking Create, you will see the following screen:

Let's discuss the available options:

  • Monitored language — select a language that you would like to monitor. Whenever this language is changed within the current project (find detailed information on trigger conditions below), certain action(s) will be applied to the automated languages.

  • Automated languages — choose one or more project languages to apply automations to. You can also select All project languages from the Automated languages dropdown. In this case, all newly added languages will also be automated, and the number of available automations will be re-calculated.

  • Minimal change required — possible values range from 0% to 100%. This setting provides the minimal monitored language change required to trigger the automation.

  • Allow cascade triggering — when enabled, the current automation can be triggered by other automations. For example, suppose you've created a rule to monitor English language and apply TM to Russian translations. You also have another rule to monitor Russian language and use machine translation for French language. If cascade triggering is allowed for the second rule, then the corresponding action will be run whenever Russian translations are modified by the action from the first rule.


  • Actions — provide an action sequence that should be applied to the target languages. Next action in the sequence will only be attempted if the previous one failed or is not applicable. To remove an action, click on the small "cancel" icon next to the action (in the top right corner). Please remember that by default automations are applied only to the empty translation values but this can be adjusted (checks the Common action options section below).

When you are ready, click Save changes, Save and apply (to run your automations), or Add another rule to create another automation.

Available actions

The following automation actions are available:

  • Insert monitored language translation — copy the monitored translation language value into the automated languages values.

  • Apply translation memory — try to use translation memory to perform translation. You will also need to provide a value for the translation memory threshold.

  • Use machine translation — employ MT to perform translation. You'll need to choose a translation provider: Google Translate or DeepL. Please note that the MT values inserted by automations won't get saved into the translation memory.

  • Pseudolocalize — apply pseudolocalization to the automated languages. You can also increase translation length by entering a percentage number.

  • Change translation status — modify translation status for the automated languages (see the common action options below).

  • Clear translation — remove translation value by setting it to Empty. This is the only action that will always be executed, even if the target translation is not empty.

Common action options

The following options are common for all actions:

  • Force this action — the chosen action will be forcefully applied even if the target language translation is not empty. By default, automations are applied only to the empty translation values; if the value is not empty, it will be skipped. The only exception is the Clear translation action which always fires.

  • Clear statuses — unassign all statuses from the translation value before applying the new ones.

  • Mark as Unverified — when enabled, the translation value will be marked as unverified.

  • Mark as Reviewed — when enabled, the translation value will be marked as reviewed. This option is not applicable if your project has a reviewing feature disabled (you can enable it in the general project settings).

Global automation options

  • Auto-toggle Unverified — if you update the base language translation, Lokalise will automatically mark translations for all other languages as Unverified. This action is performed before applying automations. Please note that previously this option was found in the Project settings but we've moved it under Automations.

Automation mechanics

Actions logic

If you have specified multiple actions for the same automation (for example, Apply translation memory and Use machine translation), only one action at most will be performed. First the automation will try to apply TM to the chosen languages, and only if this operation fails (for example, if no suitable entries were found in the TM) then it will try to perform translation using the chosen MT provider. However, if the first action succeeds, the second one will be ignored.

Also remember that by default automations are applied only to the empty values. To override this behavior, enable the Force this action option.

Action triggers

Automations get triggered after a certain operation has been performed:

  • Find and replace — never triggers

  • API v1 — never triggers

    • Update a translation — always triggers

    • Upload a file, create a key, update a key — triggers only if the use_automations parameter is set to true (the default value is false)

  • Graphical interface (Lokalise web interface):

  • Bulk actions:

    • Copy keys, clear translations, restore history, pseudolocalize — never triggers

    • Fill with key name, fill with text, source to target, apply TM — triggers only if the corresponding checkbox is enabled

  • Language settings (change plural forms) — never triggers

  • File import via Git integrations — triggers only if the corresponding checkbox is enabled

  • Content integrations (Contentful, WordPress, Zendesk Guide, Intercom Articles etc) — always triggers

  • Design integrations (Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch etc) — always triggers

  • Link keys, merge keys — never triggers

  • Translation image set — never triggers

  • Translation editor, in-context editor — always triggers

  • Branch merging — never triggers

  • Machine translation orders — never triggers

  • Gengo orders — always triggers

Language permissions and statuses

  • If a contributor is making changes to a monitored language, the automation will be triggered even if this contributor has no permissions for the target language.
    For example, suppose you have an automation monitoring the English language. Whenever a change is made, an MT provider should be used to populate translations for the French language. Ann is a contributor who has read/write access to the English language. She, however, has no permissions to view or modify the French translations. Still, if Ann modifies English translations, the automation will trigger and the chosen MT provider will be used to populate French translations.

  • If contributing within tasks only option is enabled in the project settings, automations will still propagate to the locked languages.

  • Only unlocked translations trigger automations. In other words, if some translation is locked because it was included in an order or a task, it should not trigger an automation.

Running automations on demand

To run your automations on demand without making changes to the translations, just click Save and apply:

Using automations during key creation

By default, automations won't be run during the key creation process. To enable automations, tick the Automations checkbox:

Using automations during file import

By default, automations won't be run during the file import process. To enable them, tick the Enable automations checkbox:

Please note that this feature cannot be used in conjunction with the Pre-translate with 100% TM matches option. If you need to pre-translate the uploaded texts and apply some automation logic, create a special automation action Apply translation memory > with threshold 100%, and tick only the Enable automations setting.

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