Validation & reviewer queue

Validation is how a translation gets confirmed by a human. Enough validations and the project’s health rises and decay falls.

Editing a cell validates it

The most common way a cell gets validated is the simplest one: you type a translation, and Aquilla marks it validated by you in the same gesture. The cell’s indicator turns green and the control’s label changes to “remove your validation”: no separate confirm step. Empty cells are never auto-validated.

This is self-validation: a human (you) has touched the cell. A project can require more than one validation before a cell counts as fully reviewed; that’s where reviewer validation comes in, layered on top of self-validation rather than replacing it.

Validating a cell as a reviewer

If you have a reviewer (or higher) role, each cell offers a control to validate it: to say “this translation is correct,” whether or not you wrote it. Changed your mind? You can unvalidate it again.

This validation control (the health ring, the validate toggle, and a “Validated by” popover) sits immediately to the left of its target cell. The line-number gutter further left is separate: it only ever carries the line number and any stale-source markers.

Each validation a cell receives counts as an endorsement. As a cell collects the endorsements it needs, its decay falls and the project’s health rises.

Validating several cells at once

Select multiple cells to reveal Validate and Unvalidate in the selection bar at the bottom of the screen. Bulk validation skips cells that aren’t eligible and tells you why: for example, an untouched AI draft needs individual review before it can be validated, and a cell still needs a translation before it can be validated at all.

A project’s Batch validation size setting (Project Settings → AI Instructions, 0–500, default 0) caps how many eligible cells a single bulk validate action processes at once; 0 means no cap: all eligible cells in the selection.

Required validation count

A project’s settings set how many validations a cell needs before it counts as fully reviewed: anywhere from 1 to 15 (the default is 1). Setting it to two or more lets a project require genuine peer review rather than a single sign-off.

• A cell counts as fully validated only once it reaches the required count.
• By default a cell’s translator can validate their own work, but a project can turn self-validation off; then a validation only counts if it comes from someone other than the cell’s last editor.

Validation is per target language

On a project with more than one target language, validation is tracked separately for each one: validating a cell in Spanish doesn’t validate it in French, and each language keeps its own validation progress. A reviewer who’s scoped to certain languages can only validate cells in those languages.

When a validation doesn’t stick

If your role or scope doesn’t allow a validation, Aquilla tells you why up front rather than letting the click revert silently:

• On an individual cell, a disabled Validate control explains why: “Outside your assigned files or lanes” if the cell isn’t in your scope, or “Validation unavailable” if your role doesn’t allow validating at all.
• Selecting several cells and choosing bulk Validate shows “Some selected cells are outside your assigned files or lanes” if part of the selection is out of scope for you.
• If a validation is rejected anyway (for example, your scope changed and this device hasn’t refreshed yet), a dismissible banner explains exactly why: the file or lane isn’t in your assigned scope, self-validation is off for this project, your role can’t validate on this project, or you’re not on the project’s validator allowlist.

This also closes a gap on projects with self-validation off: that setting now reliably blocks a translator’s own edit from auto-validating itself, not just manual reviewer clicks.

The reviewer queue

Rather than hunting for unreviewed cells, reviewers use the reviewer queue, which surfaces cells that are unvalidated or under-validated, ordered by priority. Work down the queue and the project steadily gets confirmed.

Tip

Validation answers “has a human confirmed this?” It’s separate from built-in checks (which flag likely problems) and from comments (which are for discussion). A cell can be validated without any comments, and a cell can have a comment without being validated.