Provisional Machine Translation

When Sublarr cannot find a subtitle in your target language, it can translate one itself. By default that translation is the final answer. Provisional machine translation changes that: the translated subtitle is written and usable right away, but the item stays on record as still wanting a human original — and Sublarr actively keeps searching for one on a recurring schedule, instead of just hoping you’ll notice and re-search it yourself.

Provisional machine-translation lifecycle

This is opt-in per language profile. Turn it on for libraries where you’d rather have an immediate, readable subtitle than wait, but still prefer a hand-authored original whenever one becomes available.

What “provisional” means

A machine translation Sublarr produces is always recorded as a managed download flagged with the source machine_translation and a score of 0 — the lowest possible score. A real provider or embedded subtitle always outranks it.

The profile toggle controls what happens to the wanted item after the translation is written:

• Off (default): the item is considered satisfied and removed from the wanted list once the translation is written. This is the ordinary behaviour.
• On: the translated subtitle is marked provisional and the item is kept in a dedicated provisional state instead of being removed, so it can be actively re-checked.

Either way the translated subtitle file is written to disk immediately and is usable right away — the difference is only whether Sublarr keeps looking for something better afterwards.

Turning it on

The setting lives on each language profile: Settings → Languages & Profiles, in a profile’s editor. See Languages & Profiles for how profiles are assigned to series and movies.

Setting	Default	Effect
Keep seeking the original (provisional MT)	Off	When on, a Sublarr-produced translation is marked provisional and the item stays in the search queue instead of being deleted.

Once enabled, two more controls appear:

Setting	Default	Effect
When an original is found	Notify me	Notify me — raises a review entry instead of touching any file (see Reviewing a found original below). Replace automatically — installs the original and trashes the superseded machine translation without asking.
Minimum score for the original	1	The machine translation itself always scores 0, so the default of 1 accepts any genuine match. Raise this to require a stronger candidate before it replaces (or is offered to replace) the machine translation.

Note

These settings apply to the item’s effective profile: a series or movie with an explicit profile assignment uses that profile’s setting; everything else falls back to the default profile.

How the re-seek works

A dedicated scheduled job (mt_reseek) runs once a day and re-searches every provisional item — but only in original-only mode: it looks for a genuine provider or embedded subtitle exactly like a normal search would, without ever translating anything itself. This means a provisional item can never trigger another machine translation of itself; it can only be superseded by something real.

1. Translate. No suitable subtitle exists in the target language, so Sublarr translates one and writes it to disk immediately.
2. Record as provisional. The translation is recorded as a machine_translation download at score 0, and the wanted item is set to provisional instead of being removed.
3. Re-seek daily. The mt_reseek job checks the item again once a day (like the scheduler’s other recurring jobs, it can also be run on demand from Settings → System → Scheduler). Because the machine translation is always score 0, any genuine result that meets the minimum score qualifies.
4. Act on a match, per the profile’s setting:
   • Replace automatically — the original is installed and the superseded machine translation is moved to Trash (recoverable, not deleted outright).
   • Notify me — nothing is written yet; a review entry is raised instead (see below).
5. No match yet — the item stays provisional and is tried again on the next daily pass.

Reviewing a found original

When a profile is set to Notify me, a found original doesn’t replace anything automatically. Instead it shows up as a pending review on the Wanted page: a bell indicator appears in the toolbar with a count badge, and opening it lists every pending original with its provider, score, and when it was found.

For each entry you can:

• Approve — installs the original and trashes the superseded machine translation, exactly like Replace automatically would have.
• Reject — keeps the machine translation as-is and pins the item so mt_reseek never re-checks or re-notifies for it again.

Tip

Pinning only happens as a result of rejecting a pending original — there’s no separate “pin” button. If you’re happy with a machine translation and don’t want Sublarr to keep looking, reject its first pending match rather than disabling the profile toggle for the whole library.

What you see

• On disk: the translated subtitle sits next to your media exactly as any other subtitle would, so playback works immediately — nothing about provisional status is visible to your media player.
• In Statistics: provisional items are counted separately, so you can see how many are still holding a machine translation while Sublarr keeps seeking an original. See Statistics.
• In history: the translation is recorded as a machine_translation download, distinct from provider downloads, so it’s clear which subtitles Sublarr produced itself versus found.

Tip

Leave the toggle off if you treat Sublarr’s translations as final and don’t want items lingering in a provisional state. Turn it on — with Replace automatically — for libraries where a human-authored original should silently take over the moment one appears; use Notify me if you’d rather approve each swap yourself.