The translation workspace is where you translate lyrics, fix pronunciation, and set up spacing for Japanese or Chinese, all in one place. Nothing is applied to your song until you save, so you can review everything first.
1. Opening the workspace
Open a song that has lyrics and choose Edit Translation. Each row shows the original lyric, a language tag, the pronunciation when there is one, and an English translation field. Japanese (ja) and Chinese (zh...) rows also get a spacing field. Split ad-libs show up as indented rows.
The language tag starts as auto. If detection gets it wrong, set a code yourself, like ko, ja, zh-CN, es, or en. en means the source is already English, so the translation and pronunciation are cleared for that row.
2. Translating lines
Pick whichever method suits the lyric:
- Translate All translates every row using its language tag, then fills in the translation and pronunciation where they’re available. While it runs, the button turns into Stop Translation.
- Translate with Context groups rows by language and translates each group together, which helps keep the surrounding meaning. The lines around a lyric matter a lot for accuracy, especially with poetry.
- Refresh a line with the circular-arrow button on that row to fetch a new result for just that row.
Translation always targets English. Before you save, check names, slang, wordplay, and line breaks.
3. Spacing Japanese and Chinese
For rows tagged ja or zh..., you can edit the Spacing Field by hand or click Auto Spacing. Auto Spacing estimates where the word breaks go, keeps punctuation, and updates pronunciation, but only for the matching rows. It can take longer than translation, since it works through each line piece by piece.
Treat the result as a first draft. Check names, particles, mixed Latin text, and punctuation. Keep in mind that once a row has a spacing value, later translations of that row use it.
4. Editing, importing, and exporting
You can edit the translation and pronunciation directly. Export Text downloads one block per row, with a blank line between blocks.
Import Text matches each block to a row by its original lyric, ignoring case. If a lyric doesn’t match, it falls back to the block’s position, so keep your blocks in order.
5. Saving or resetting
- Save Changes applies the draft to the song in your Vault and closes the workspace.
- Cancel asks before throwing away unsaved edits.
- Refresh Lyrics clears translations, pronunciation, and spacing, and resets the language tags to
auto. Your original lyrics stay as they are.
Review before saving
The workspace is a draft: changing a language tag, running a translation, or editing spacing does not overwrite the Vault until you choose Save Changes. Translate All works across the rows, while Translate with Context processes related rows together; both can return imperfect lyrics, especially for names, slang, poetic phrasing, and code-switching. Use the row-level refresh when one result needs another attempt.
Keep original lyrics as your matching reference when importing text. After edits, check that the pronunciation and English meaning still correspond to the original line, then save. Cancel or closing with unsaved changes gives you a chance to discard the draft. Refresh Lyrics is a reset action for the translation fields and language detection, not a way to restore a prior translation.