Translation Memory

Translation Memory (TM) stores every translation the engine produces so future runs can reuse it. Memory is owned by the project owner and shared across all of their projects — one memory per account, not per project. That means consistent translations across your whole codebase and lower credit consumption.

Scope

• The owner sees and manages their entire memory — entries written by any project they own.
• Members are limited to entries from the projects they are a member of.
• The <projectId> used by the CLI and API selects which project route to call; it does not limit the results to that project.

How It Works

When Babelize translates a string:

1. The engine looks up your memory for an existing translation of the same (or a very similar) source string
2. An exact match is reused directly — no AI call needed; fuzzy matches are used only when confidence is high, and short sentence fragments are left to the AI for context accuracy
3. Anything new is translated by the AI and saved to your memory for next time

Glossary and brand-voice terms are deliberately excluded from shared memory, so they can't leak into your other projects. Over time, your TM builds a custom translation database that reflects your team's terminology.

Managing TM

Dashboard

1. Open your project
2. Click Memory in the project sidebar
3. Browse, search, and filter by language
4. Edit entries inline or delete outdated ones
5. Use Export to download the memory as TMX or CSV, and Import CSV to upload entries

CLI

babelize tm list <projectId>             # List entries (owner: your whole TM)
babelize tm add <projectId> --source "Hello" --translation "Hola" --target-lang es
babelize tm update <projectId> <id> --translation "new text"
babelize tm delete <projectId> <id>      # Delete a single entry
babelize tm export <projectId>           # Export your TM as TMX
babelize tm clear <projectId>            # Clear TM (with confirmation)

Export (TMX or CSV)

Export your TM in the standard TMX format (the default) or as CSV for backup, migration, or editing in a spreadsheet:

# Via API
curl -X GET https://api.babelize.co/api/projects/<id>/tm/export              # TMX
curl -X GET "https://api.babelize.co/api/projects/<id>/tm/export?format=csv" # CSV

For owners the export contains the whole shared memory (the filename is keyed by the project you requested). The TMX file can be imported into most CAT tools or other TM systems. The CSV is UTF-8 with a BOM (so Excel shows non-Latin scripts correctly), uses BCP-47 language codes, and has this header:

source_text,translated_text,source_lang,target_lang,iso_key
Save,Enregistrer,en,fr,actions.save

CSV Import

Admins and editors can import entries from a CSV (the format the CSV export produces) with Import CSV on the Memory page, or through the API:

curl -X POST https://api.babelize.co/api/projects/<id>/tm/import \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"csv": "source_text,translated_text,target_lang\nSave,Enregistrer,fr\n", "mode": "merge"}'
# → {"imported": 1, "updated": 0, "skipped": 0, "errors": []}

• Columns are matched by header name in any letter case (source, target and translation also work). Only source_text and translated_text are required. source_lang defaults to en; a row without target_lang uses default_target_lang from the request, or is skipped.
• Up to 10,000 rows per import. Invalid rows (unsupported language, missing target language, empty text, duplicates) are skipped and listed in errors with their row number; the other rows are still imported.
• Imported entries count as approved, like a manual edit.
• mode: "merge" (the default) adds new entries and overwrites the translation of any entry with the same source text and languages.
• mode: "replace" first clears this project's entries (entries from your other projects are kept) and is limited to owners and admins.

Plan Availability

Translation Memory is available on all plans, including Free.

Best Practices

• Clean up stale entries — periodically review and remove outdated translations
• Export before major changes — keep a backup before clearing TM (clearing removes everything you own)