feat(translation): accept/reject gate on Interpreter's detection confidence (#1376)

Interpreter now returns a real per-detection confidence (source stays "auto"),
so curator can reject the mis-detections it was blindly storing — e.g. a short
English title mis-labelled as German and rewritten into the archive.

The gate consumes ONLY Interpreter's own reported detection — curator does no
language detection of its own (Scribe rule 133): a field is stored when the
engine actually translated it AND either the detected language is CJK
(script-detected, reliably high — ja/ko/zh trusted outright, incl. pure-kanji
Japanese that lands as zh ~0.75) or the reported confidence clears a
latin-script floor (_MIN_LATIN_CONFIDENCE = 0.90). A latin detection below the
floor keeps the original and marks the post handled; a missing confidence fails
open. The client already sent source="auto" and parsed confidence, so this is
purely the gate + tests.

Tests: pinned interpreter-client test now asserts source stays "auto"; new
pure-unit gate tests (CJK trusted / latin floor / case-insensitive / fail-open)
in the fast lane; end-to-end reject-low-latin, accept-high-latin,
accept-low-cjk sweeps.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01CgZP9v2otxVJymiYsnVuMy

backend/app/tasks/translation.py

@@ -6,6 +6,11 @@ viewing is instant and re-runs are cache-fast. Sync (Celery workers are sync),
 same pattern as the other backfill sweeps. No-op unless translation is enabled,
 a base URL is set, and the service is healthy.
 
+Curator does NO language detection of its own: each field's translation is
+accepted or rejected purely on Interpreter's reported engine + detected language
++ confidence (see ``_accept``) — a short English title Interpreter mis-labels as
+a European language scores below the latin-script floor and is kept as-is.
+
 Two entry points:
 - ``translate_posts`` — the periodic untranslated sweep (every 8h;
   translated_source_lang IS NULL only), one bounded chunk per fire. The Settings
@@ -45,6 +50,18 @@ _RETRANSLATE_COUNTDOWN = 5
 _INTERRUPT_BACKOFF = 60
 _INTERRUPT_BACKOFF_MAX = 900
 
+# --- Translation acceptance gate (Scribe rule 133; contract note #1347) -------
+# Curator does NO language detection of its own — it accepts or rejects a
+# translation purely on Interpreter's reported detection. CJK is script-detected
+# (kana/hangul/kanji) and reliably high-confidence, so ja/ko/zh are trusted
+# outright (pure-kanji Japanese can even come back labelled zh ~0.75, still
+# correctly translated). Latin-script detection is a real statistical
+# probability, so a short English title Interpreter mis-labels as a European
+# language scores low; require it to clear this floor, else keep the original.
+# Tune the floor against real titles via the Settings "Test translation" box.
+_CJK_LANGS = frozenset({"ja", "ko", "zh"})
+_MIN_LATIN_CONFIDENCE = 0.90
+
 
 def _interrupt_backoff(retry_after) -> int:
     """Seconds to wait before resuming after an Interpreter interruption: the
@@ -272,18 +289,39 @@ def _summary(status: str, translated: int, scanned: int) -> str:
     return f"translated={translated} scanned={scanned}"
 
 
+def _accept(language: str, confidence) -> bool:
+    """Should curator store Interpreter's translation, or keep the original?
+    Consumes ONLY Interpreter's own detection (curator does none, Scribe rule
+    133): CJK languages are trusted regardless of the reported number; a
+    latin-script detection must clear ``_MIN_LATIN_CONFIDENCE``. A missing
+    confidence fails OPEN (accept), so a service that omits the field never causes
+    translations to be silently dropped."""
+    if (language or "").split("-", 1)[0].lower() in _CJK_LANGS:
+        return True
+    if confidence is None:
+        return True
+    return confidence >= _MIN_LATIN_CONFIDENCE
+
+
 def _translate_field(text: str, base_url: str, target: str):
     """Translate ONE field independently. Returns (translated, source_lang,
     engine_version), or (None, None, None) when there's nothing to store — empty
-    text, already the target language, or a passthrough (engine "none"). Per-field
-    (not aggregate first-item) detection so a non-English description still gets
-    translated when the title is already English (mixed-language posts)."""
+    text, already the target language, a passthrough (engine "none"), or a
+    latin-script detection the acceptance gate rejects as too low-confidence (kept
+    as the original). Per-field (not aggregate first-item) detection so a
+    non-English description still gets translated when the title is already
+    English (mixed-language posts)."""
     if not text:
         return None, None, None
     res = ic.translate([text], base_url=base_url, target=target)
     detected = res["detected_lang"] or target
     if detected == target or res["engine"] == "none":
         return None, None, None
+    # Trust only Interpreter's own detection (Scribe rule 133): keep the original
+    # when a latin-script detection doesn't clear the confidence floor, so a short
+    # English title mis-labelled as e.g. German isn't rewritten into the archive.
+    if not _accept(detected, res.get("detected_confidence")):
+        return None, None, None
     return res["translations"][0], detected, res["engine_version"]
 
 

tests/test_interpreter_client.py

@@ -38,6 +38,9 @@ def test_translate_maps_batch_in_order(monkeypatch):
     assert out["engine_version"] == "ollama:x:12b"
     assert captured["json"]["q"] == ["ねこが可愛い", "金髪ギャル！"]
     assert captured["json"]["target"] == "en"
+    # Source MUST stay "auto": an explicit source makes Interpreter skip detection
+    # and report confidence 1.0, which would defeat the acceptance gate.
+    assert captured["json"]["source"] == "auto"
 
 
 def test_translate_passthrough_unchanged(monkeypatch):

tests/test_translate_posts.py

@@ -252,6 +252,68 @@ def test_translate_posts_beat_single_chunk_no_tail_chase(db_sync, monkeypatch):
     assert calls == []                           # no self-re-enqueue
 
 
+def _mock_lang(monkeypatch, *, lang, conf, ver="v1"):
+    # Interpreter is up and returns a translation with the given detected language
+    # + confidence, so the acceptance gate can be exercised end-to-end.
+    monkeypatch.setattr("backend.app.tasks.translation.ic.health", lambda *a, **k: True)
+    monkeypatch.setattr(
+        "backend.app.tasks.translation.ic.translate",
+        lambda texts, **k: {
+            "translations": [f"EN:{t}" for t in texts],
+            "detected_lang": lang, "detected_confidence": conf,
+            "engine": "llm", "engine_version": ver,
+        },
+    )
+
+
+def test_translate_posts_rejects_low_confidence_latin(db_sync, monkeypatch):
+    # A short English title Interpreter mis-labels as German with LOW confidence is
+    # NOT stored — the original is kept, and the post is marked handled (source ==
+    # target) so the sweep won't revisit it.
+    _patch(monkeypatch, db_sync)
+    _mock_lang(monkeypatch, lang="de", conf=0.42)
+    a = _artist(db_sync)
+    p = _post(db_sync, a.id, title="Nami Heroines - WIP Part 1", ext="p1")
+    _enable(db_sync)
+    db_sync.commit()
+
+    translate_posts()
+    db_sync.refresh(p)
+    assert p.post_title_translated is None            # mis-flag rejected, kept
+    assert p.translated_source_lang == "en"           # marked handled (== target)
+
+
+def test_translate_posts_accepts_high_confidence_latin(db_sync, monkeypatch):
+    # A confident latin-script detection (real German) clears the floor → stored.
+    _patch(monkeypatch, db_sync)
+    _mock_lang(monkeypatch, lang="de", conf=0.98)
+    a = _artist(db_sync)
+    p = _post(db_sync, a.id, title="Das Mädchen mit dem Perlenohrring", ext="p2")
+    _enable(db_sync)
+    db_sync.commit()
+
+    translate_posts()
+    db_sync.refresh(p)
+    assert p.post_title_translated == "EN:Das Mädchen mit dem Perlenohrring"
+    assert p.translated_source_lang == "de"
+
+
+def test_translate_posts_accepts_low_confidence_cjk(db_sync, monkeypatch):
+    # CJK is script-detected and trusted regardless of the reported number — a
+    # zh 0.75 (e.g. pure-kanji Japanese) is still translated, not rejected.
+    _patch(monkeypatch, db_sync)
+    _mock_lang(monkeypatch, lang="zh", conf=0.75)
+    a = _artist(db_sync)
+    p = _post(db_sync, a.id, title="猫が可愛い", ext="p3")
+    _enable(db_sync)
+    db_sync.commit()
+
+    translate_posts()
+    db_sync.refresh(p)
+    assert p.post_title_translated == "EN:猫が可愛い"
+    assert p.translated_source_lang == "zh"
+
+
 def _mock_new_model(monkeypatch, *, ver="v2"):
     """Interpreter is up and translates with a NEW engine version."""
     monkeypatch.setattr("backend.app.tasks.translation.ic.health", lambda *a, **k: True)

tests/test_translation_gate.py

@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
+"""Translation acceptance gate (#1376) — pure unit tests for ``_accept``, which
+decides whether curator stores Interpreter's translation or keeps the original.
+Curator does no detection of its own; it only thresholds Interpreter's reported
+detected language + confidence (Scribe rule 133). No DB, no network."""
+from backend.app.tasks.translation import _MIN_LATIN_CONFIDENCE, _accept
+
+
+def test_accept_trusts_cjk_regardless_of_confidence():
+    # ja/ko/zh are script-detected — accepted even at a low reported number
+    # (pure-kanji Japanese can come back labelled zh ~0.75, still translated).
+    assert _accept("ja", None) is True
+    assert _accept("ja", 0.10) is True
+    assert _accept("ko", 0.99) is True
+    assert _accept("zh", 0.75) is True
+    assert _accept("zh-CN", 0.20) is True      # region suffix is still CJK
+
+
+def test_accept_requires_floor_for_latin():
+    assert _accept("de", 0.98) is True
+    assert _accept("de", _MIN_LATIN_CONFIDENCE) is True          # exactly at floor
+    assert _accept("de", _MIN_LATIN_CONFIDENCE - 0.01) is False
+    assert _accept("fr", 0.40) is False                          # short mis-flag
+
+
+def test_accept_is_case_insensitive():
+    assert _accept("JA", None) is True
+    assert _accept("DE", 0.40) is False
+
+
+def test_accept_missing_confidence_fails_open():
+    # No confidence reported → don't silently drop a translation.
+    assert _accept("de", None) is True
+    assert _accept("", None) is True