Disable translation memory for newly added source strings

[tt-tims]

I want to disable the automatic translation of newly added source strings - even if it bears a strong similarity to an existing source string. I understand that this feature can be very useful and, in some circumstances, can save you a certain amount of translation work, but in our use case it is often rather confusing.

Therefore, I am looking for a way to simply leave new source strings blank. I have already searched through the documentation but have not found an option to disable this behavior. I am therefore afraid that there is currently no easy way to do this via web frontend.

I have considered whether it would be possible to write a custom add-on that binds to “EVENT_POST_ADD” and then simply clears the translation. However, I do not know whether the event is sent at the right time, or whether the automatic translation based on the translation memory will takes effect afterwards.

I would be grateful for any help.

[nijel]

The automatic translation is done via add-on that somebody had to install. Removing it will disable automatic translations. You can also customize the search query to exclude certain strings from the automatic translation. See https://docs.weblate.org/en/latest/admin/addons.html#automatic-translation

[tt-tims]

Thank you for your quick reply!

In my setup neither projects nor components have the "automatic translation" add-on enabled. This was one of the things I double-checked.

The original (one year old) string looks like this.

Yesterday a completely new source string was added and the translation was copied automatically from the original source string afterwards. See the history for the strings.

With no "automatic translation" add-on enabled this behavior is odd, isn't it?

If it is relevant, I use Weblate 5.12.2 in a docker environment.

[nijel]

The string was added in the repository, there is no automatic translation in Weblate. Perhaps you want to disable fuzzy matching in the msgmerge invocation?

[tt-tims]

Thank you for the hint with msgmerge. I tried to disable fuzzy matching via https://docs.weblate.org/en/weblate-5.12.2/admin/addons.html#addon-weblate-gettext-msgmerge. This resulted in "no new source strings" were fuzzy matched anymore, what was intended. But for "changed" source strings (already existing ones in source that were only slightly modified) will loose their entire translation and are empty afterwards, what is not intended at all. It looks like without "msgmerge fuzzy matching" all not identical strings are treated as "new strings". Neither with nor without fuzzy matching I get the wanted behavior.

Maybe I need to revise our translation workflow again to get a better integration. I am concerned that uploading an updated POT via REST API to Weblate is not a suitable workflow, as this also has other effects: e.g. we observe translations already made in the UI are “forgotten” or reset by some magic automatism after the POT is uploaded via REST API.