Weblate project-level permission boundaries with automatic translation suggestions

Question

Permission inheritance for machine-translated strings
Weblate applies project-level permission boundaries to control whether contributors can commit translations directly or require coordinator review. When automatic translation suggestions are enabled via the integrated machine translation APIs, the system populates translation fields with suggestions that contributors can accept with a single action.
The documentation indicates that permission checks occur at commit time, but it does not explicitly clarify whether accepting a machine-translated suggestion constitutes a "commit" action for permission evaluation purposes. This creates ambiguity when a project is configured to require review for human-contributed translations but the team wants to allow direct acceptance of high-confidence machine suggestions without coordinator intervention.
Assuming Weblate 5.x with the standard review workflow enabled, the desired behavior is to differentiate permission enforcement based on translation origin — human input versus accepted machine suggestion — without disabling the review requirement entirely.

Does accepting a machine translation suggestion trigger the same permission check as a manual translation edit?
Can the review workflow be configured to auto-approve suggestions from specific machine translation backends while retaining review for manual entries?
Is there a supported configuration to log the translation origin (human vs. machine) for audit purposes when permissions are evaluated?

Zoha · Answer

Answer
Accepting a machine‑translation suggestion is treated as a commit and triggers the same permission check as a manual edit, unless the project’s machine‑translation settings have auto‑approval enabled for that backend.
Confirmed facts

Weblate evaluates permissions at commit time; the act of accepting a suggestion counts as a commit.
When “Auto‑approve machine translations” is turned on for a specific MT backend, accepted suggestions bypass the review step while manual edits still require review.
The translation origin (human vs. machine) is stored in the database and appears in the audit log with a flag indicating “machine translation”.
No built‑in UI option exists to differentiate permission checks further; finer granularity would require custom hooks or a plugin.

Steps to achieve the desired behavior

Open the project in Weblate → Machine translation → Settings.
Locate the Auto‑approve machine translations toggle.
Enable it and select the MT backends (e.g., Google Translate, DeepL) for which you want suggestions to be accepted without review.
Save the changes.
Verify: as a contributor without review permission, accept a suggestion from an enabled backend; the change should be committed immediately.
Check the audit log (Project → History) – the entry should show “Source: Machine translation” and indicate that the commit succeeded without entering the review queue.

Missing diagnostic detail
To confirm that the configuration works as expected, please confirm which machine‑translation backends you have enabled for auto‑approval (or if you are using the default Weblate MT). This detail changes whether the auto‑approval rule applies to your suggestions.

Weblate project-level permission boundaries with automatic translation suggestions

Permission inheritance for machine-translated strings

1 answer

Answer

Confirmed facts

Steps to achieve the desired behavior

Missing diagnostic detail

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