Terminology

Consistency matters in translation: a key term like LORD or covenant should be rendered the same way everywhere. Aquilla’s terminology system helps your team agree on preferred renderings and keep to them.

Termbases and concepts

• A termbase is a project’s dictionary of concepts: the meanings you care about (for example “God’s covenant” or “forgiveness”).
• Each concept records its preferred rendering in your target language, along with definition and related concepts.
• A project can use its own termbase and also subscribe to org-wide termbases shared across projects.

Rendering status

A concept can list more than one target rendering, and each one carries a status that says how it should be treated:

Status	Meaning
Preferred	The rendering to reach for: what Aquilla nudges you toward.
Admitted	An acceptable alternative; allowed without a nudge.
Forbidden	This rendering should not be used; flagged as a violation.

A concept itself also has a lifecycle: active, draft, or deprecated. Only active concepts are compiled into the checks you see while translating; draft and deprecated concepts sit in the termbase, unenforced.

How enforcement feels while translating

Terminology in Aquilla is advisory by design, guiding without blocking:

• As you type, Aquilla checks your text against the active concepts in the termbase, live.
• Every issue (a missed preferred rendering or a used forbidden one) shows as a single inline underline under the term itself: amber for a missed preferred rendering, red for a forbidden one. A small violet T marks it as a terminology check, so you can tell it apart from Aquilla’s other built-in checks. Hover the underline for the rule name and what’s wrong: it’s a nudge, not a wall, and you can still override it when the context calls for something different.
• A forbidden rendering is treated more firmly: it also shows up grouped by concept in the Terminology page’s Violations tab, and feeds into the project’s violations inbox and the cell’s colour marker like any other check.

Adding a term while translating

Select source text and choose Add to term base from the selection toolbar to draft a new concept without leaving the editor. Adding, editing, deleting, or archiving termbase entries needs a minimum role that your organization sets, Project lead by default; below that role the termbase is read-only, and the dialog opens already explained and blocked, naming the role you need. An organization owner can change this floor from Org Settings → Terminology permissions, anywhere from Contributor (so translators can manage terms directly) up to Maintainer (the most restrictive option). If a save fails for another reason (you’re offline, a conflict, a server error), Aquilla shows the reason and keeps the dialog open so you can retry, instead of silently discarding what you typed.

Sharing terminology in and out

Terminology can be imported and exported in standard formats: TBX (the industry terminology-exchange standard) and CSV, so you can round-trip your termbase with other translation tools. See Exporting your work.

Still settling

Authoring and lookup are in place, along with advisory matching and TBX/CSV exchange. Some of the team-wide publishing and reviewer flows around terminology are still being rolled out.