Deleting things in a translation project is nerve-racking, because the work you would lose is not the file — it is every translation attached to it. WebTranslateIt is built so that this is hard to do by accident: when you delete something, it is moved to your project’s trash rather than destroyed, and you can put it back.

Opening the Trash#

Go to your project settings and open the Recovery tab.

You need to be a project manager to see it. Translators cannot restore or permanently delete anything.

What Can Be Recovered#

The Recovery tab is split into four sections:

Deleted Files#

Master files you have removed from the File Manager. Each row tells you how many segments the file contained and how many target files hang off it, so you can see the size of what you are restoring before you restore it.

Recovering a master file brings back its target files and their translations with it.

Deleted Languages#

Target languages removed from the project. Recovering a language brings back the translations that were made in it.

Deleted Segments#

Individual segments removed from the project, listed with the file they came from and how many translations they carry.

Note that this is not the same thing as an obsolete segment. A segment that disappears from your master file is obsoleted, not deleted: it stays in the project, hidden from translators, and comes back on its own if the segment reappears in a later upload. That mechanism is described in the segment lifecycle. The Recovery tab is for segments that were actually deleted.

Deleted Discussions#

Discussions removed from the project, with their comments. Recovering a discussion brings the whole thread back.

Restoring Something#

Each entry has a Recover link. Click it and the item is put back where it was, along with everything attached to it. There is no partial restore — a file comes back with its translations, a discussion with its comments.

Every restore is recorded in your project activity, so it is visible to the rest of the team.

Emptying the Trash#

Two destructive actions are available from the same page:

• Delete on an individual entry, which permanently destroys that one item.
• Empty trash, which permanently destroys everything in the current section.

Both ask for confirmation first, and neither can be undone. Once something is deleted from the trash, WebTranslateIt cannot bring it back for you — so unless you have a concrete reason to purge (a file uploaded to the wrong project, say, or content that must not be retained), leaving items in the trash costs you nothing.

Recovering a Whole Project#

Deleting an entire project works the same way, but the trash lives one level up, on your organization. Go to your organization, open the Projects tab and click Deleted projects. Every project deleted from your organization is listed there, most recent first, with a link to recover it.

Next Up: Batch Operations. Batch Operations lets you run a script to change parameters on several segments at once… »