Creating a project

A project is the top-level container for a translation effort. It holds your files, your team and their roles, your settings, and the quality signals Aquilla tracks (validation, health and decay, built-in checks).

Create a project

From your organization’s Projects page, choose + New Project. You’ll set:

• Project name: what your team will recognise it by.
• Source language: the language you’re translating from. Plain names and refinements both work: English, Grade 7 English, es-419.
• Target language(s): the language or languages you’re translating into. The first one you enter becomes the project’s primary target language, its default lane. “Lane” is Aquilla’s word for each target-language track within a project; see the glossary. You can add more target languages later in Settings → General → Languages, and each one becomes its own lane; once a project has more than one, a lane switcher appears in the editor so your team can move between them. See Files, cells & navigation.

Under Advanced: project shape, choose the project’s shape:

• Self-contained (default): owns both its source and its target text.
• Source-only: a project that exists to be linked against as a shared source; it has no target language of its own.
• Linked target: reads its source text from another project. If you’re adding a sibling language for a source you already have in Aquilla, the dialog suggests adding it as a target lane on that project instead, so there’s no separate project to keep in sync. Linked targets are the recommended shape for translation chains, where you’re translating from another project’s translations rather than its original source. See Source projects & linked targets.

The Create New Project dialog with the Advanced shape options expanded: Self-contained is the default.

Once created, the project appears in your organization’s project list with its translated, validated, and audio progress and a last-updated time (see Project health). You can rename it later from Project Settings → General, if you have Maintainer access or above.

Adding text

A fresh project starts empty. You add the text you’re translating by:

• importing: choose Import in the workspace header (or the empty project’s Import a file button) and pick how to bring text in: upload files (USFM, DOC/DOCX, PowerPoint, Markdown, TXT, EPUB, subtitles, spreadsheets, XLIFF, TMX, a zip archive, audio/video, or a Paratext project), pick files or a whole folder straight from Google Drive, pull an openly-licensed translation straight from the eBible Corpus or the Bible API, or use one of the specialized importers; or
• linking a source project, so the source text flows in from a shared upstream project.

The Import dialog: upload your own files, pick them from Google Drive, or pull source text straight from a public library.

One of the specialized importers, Biblica Study Bible Notes (beta), brings in a study Bible’s notes from an InDesign (.idml) export as translatable text, tagged with the book and chapter they belong to. The Bible text itself is left out, since it’s set from the publisher’s own Bible files rather than being retranslated. Notes come in as whole paragraphs by default; the import panel offers an option to split long notes into one cell per sentence instead. The same panel also has checkboxes for two related editions with their own note structure: This is a Treasure Hunt Bible file and This is a Reach 4 Life file, each matched to its own .idml export.

Importing an EPUB shows a Chapters in this book checklist on the preview screen before anything is added: each entry in the book (Chapter, Table of contents, Cover, Notes, or No text) has its own checkbox, ticked for actual chapters and cleared for the rest, so you can leave out the cover and front matter and bring in only the text you want translated.

Google Drive (beta) lets you pick documents, or a whole folder, straight from your Drive without downloading them first: only the items you pick are shared with Aquilla, and a native Google Doc comes in as a DOCX. Before anything downloads you’ll see a summary of what will import and, separately, what has to be skipped and why, for example a Google Sheet (“Google Sheets aren’t supported yet, download as .xlsx and upload it instead”) or a Google Slides deck. A single Drive import is capped at 500 files.

Whatever you pick, Aquilla shows a preview of the cells it found before anything lands in the project; confirm it and the file appears in the sidebar, ready to translate.

Note

For USFM and Paratext files, the preview shows clean, readable text, not the raw backslash markers from the original file. By default, front matter (the book name and running header, main title, and introduction paragraphs) now imports as translatable cells too, alongside in-body section headings and Psalm titles, which have always imported. Turn this off per project with Exclude USFM front matter in Project Settings → Import.

The import preview: check the cells and references, then Confirm import.

If you’re moving an existing project over from Codex instead, see Migrating from Codex.

Import translations into a file

Already have translations for a file (from a partner team, a previous tool, or a spreadsheet)? Open the file, then choose Import target translations into this file from the workspace’s action menu. Upload a USFM file or a spreadsheet (CSV, TSV, or XLSX) and Aquilla matches each row to a cell, shows you the matches to review, and only overwrites an existing translation if you tick it explicitly. Confirmed rows appear in the editor immediately and sync in the background.

This is different from importing source text above: it never creates or changes source cells, only fills in translations for cells that already exist.

Inviting your team

A project is more useful with people in it. Share an invite link to bring in translators, reviewers, or viewers; each link carries the role you choose. See Inviting people and Roles & permissions.

Note

Who can create projects and change project settings depends on your role and your organization. See Organizations & members.