Keeping names and terms consistent with the glossary

Long books drift. A character called Ji-hun in chapter one becomes Jihoon in chapter nine, the Azure Pavilion turns into the Blue Pavilion, and a title that was "Elder" for ten chapters is suddenly "Senior". Every chapter is translated on its own, and a model has no memory of the choices it made last time. The glossary is that memory. It is a short list of terms with one agreed rendering each, and Crossleaf hands the relevant part of it to the model with every piece of every chapter.

You do not have to build it. As a book translates, Crossleaf keeps the list itself; see The book keeps its own list below. Most readers never open the glossary except to rename someone. Everything else on this page is there for when you want to look, or to take the wheel.

Where it lives

Open a book and the glossary is on the book page, below the chapters. Everything on it saves as you go: a change is written the moment you make it, a small Saved appears, and if a save fails you see why and can try again. Nothing is lost while you wait.

Adding a term

A term has two sides: the word as it appears in the original, and how it should read in English. Type both and press Add. New terms are locked, which means they are enforced from then on.

• In the original. The name or word exactly as the book writes it. If the book spells it more than one way, put the main spelling here and the others under other spellings (below).
• In English. The rendering you want, every time. A name, a place, a title, a recurring object, a piece of slang. Anything you want to read the same way in chapter forty as it did in chapter one.

The glossary refuses a term that is already there under a different case or accent form, because the model matches terms without regard to case: "Ana" and "ana" would be one contradiction rather than two rules. Remove the existing entry and add it again with the rendering you want.

A book can hold up to 500 terms.

Locked and off

Each term has a small switch. Locked terms are given to the model. Off keeps the term on your list without enforcing it, which is useful for a rendering you are still deciding on, or a name you want to stop forcing for a while. Remove a term with the cross beside it.

Only the locked terms that actually appear in a chapter are sent along with it, so a long glossary costs you nothing extra and does not crowd out the text.

Other spellings

Under each term is a field for other spellings, comma-separated. These are alternative ways the original writes the same thing: a nickname, a shortened form, a spelling that changed between volumes. Every spelling maps to the same English rendering, and the post-translation check (below) counts all of them. A spelling that already belongs to another term is refused, for the same reason as above.

The book keeps its own list

As a chapter translates, Crossleaf notices every name that appears, people, places, groups, titles, skills, named things, and the way it was rendered. Any name not already on the list is added and locked at that rendering, so everything translated after it uses the same one. Names the book picked up are marked kept by the book. There is nothing to switch on.

The first rendering wins. Once a name is on the list it is never changed by a later chapter, only by you. That is deliberate: a consistent spelling you can rename in one move is far better than one that quietly changes halfway through. It also means the very first spelling is not always the one you would have chosen. When that happens, rename it (next section).

Chapters translate in order, so each one inherits everything the book has learned so far. On the book page, a line such as Keeping 14 names consistent shows the list is growing; it opens the glossary.

For readers who want to look further, Suggest terms in the glossary reads a sample from the start and the middle of up to six finished chapters and proposes anything still worth locking, putting first any term already rendered inconsistently. It is free.

Pronouns

Korean, Japanese and Chinese leave the subject out of a sentence whenever a reader can tell who is meant. English cannot, so the model has to fill it in — and with nothing to go on it tends to write he. That is how a heroine ends up sounding like a man for a chapter.

So the glossary carries pronouns too. As the story makes a character's pronouns plain, Crossleaf notes she, he or they on their term. When nothing makes it plain it notes nothing rather than guessing from the name. The first confident answer wins, exactly as the spelling does, and later chapters never overwrite it.

Each term in the glossary has a small pronoun picker, so you can set or change any of them yourself, at any time. A term the book filled in is yours to correct. From then on every chapter is held to it, and a character the glossary is silent about is never assumed to be male.

Chapters translated before the pronouns were set keep their wording: retranslate the chapter, or retry just the pieces that got it wrong, to have them read the new way.

Renaming a name everywhere

Change the English rendering of any term and Crossleaf offers to rename it across the whole book: every chapter already translated, every version of it, with a line such as Rename "Do-hyun" to "Dohyun" in 212 places across 31 chapters? Confirm and it is done at once, in place, with no new version and no leaves spent. Only whole words are touched, so renaming Kim leaves Kimberly alone. Choose Just the glossary instead and only future chapters use the new rendering.

This is the move to reach for when a name looked wrong at chapter thirty. Renaming is free, and it makes the rendering yours, so the book will not change it again.

What happens to chapters already translated

Adding or locking a term by hand changes future translations, not past ones. A chapter translated before the term existed keeps its wording. To bring it in line: rename the term (above) if it already exists, retranslate the chapter for a fresh version with the glossary applied, charged like any translation, or fix the wording in place with the tools in the next two sections.

Spelled differently

For each locked term, the glossary scans the translated text of the whole book for spellings that are close to the English rendering but not the same: Jihoon where you locked Ji-hun, Anna where you locked Ana. When it finds any, a spelled differently line appears under the term with every occurrence listed and ticked, each with a little context. Untick the ones that are not really the same word, then press Fix. The ticked occurrences are rewritten to the locked spelling in place, in the translation you are reading, with no new version and no leaves spent. Chapters that are still translating are skipped, and the fix tells you if any were.

Because this is a fuzzy match, it can offer a word that merely resembles the name. That is why nothing changes until you press the button.

A good way to work

1. Import the book and translate. The list builds itself as chapters finish.
2. Read. When a name looks wrong, open the glossary from the Keeping N names consistent line and rename it everywhere.
3. Glance at any spelled differently note as chapters finish; it is one click to fix.
4. If a book spells a name several ways, add the other spellings under the term so they all map to one rendering.