Configure Fields and Output#

Use this guide when you need to align text_field, output_mode, reconstruction flags, and formats with your dataset schema before or after a first run.

For a guided first invocation, see Getting Started With Translation.

Choosing `text_field`#

Chat corpora in OpenAI layout typically use messages.*.content so every message content entry is translated consistently.
Plain documents might use a single column such as article_body. Omit wildcards when the schema is flat.

Outputs#

YAML key	Behavior
`output_field` / `translation_column`	Control column names used when emitting translated strings. The default is `translated_text`.
`output_mode`	`replaced` overwrites source strings, `raw` preserves originals plus metadata, and `both` keeps audit trails. The starter default is `both`.
`merge_scores`	Keeps FAITH outputs adjacent to translations when scoring runs.
`reconstruct_messages`, `messages_field`, `messages_content_field`	Enable faithful reconstructions of chat arrays. These default to `true` for standard `messages` and `content` layouts.

Formats#

Set input_format when automatic probing cannot distinguish ambiguous globs. Align output_format with downstream packing expectations; values are jsonl or parquet.

CLI Overrides#

You can override any YAML key with dotlists:

uv run nemotron steps run translate/nemo_curator -c default \
  text_field=messages.*.content \
  output_mode=both \
  reconstruct_messages=true \
  input_path=/path/to/chat.jsonl \
  output_dir=/path/to/out \
  source_language=en \
  target_language=fr