Compare Article Translations
compare_translationsCompare two article locales to check if the target translation needs updating. Reports freshness, outdated flags, and structural alignment.
Instructions
Compare two locales of the same article to decide whether the target translation needs work, reporting independent signals instead of one ambiguous verdict. (1) Header — a "Freshness" verdict for the target, derived from the two translations' updated_at timestamps: if the source was edited after the target it is "likely behind, review recommended" (with the day gap), otherwise "up to date". This is the primary staleness signal and is always available. (2) Zendesk's own per-translation "outdated" flag for the target ("yes"/"no"/"unknown"), shown as a secondary overlay: it is only set through Guide's native "mark out of date" workflow and NOT by API edits, so a "no" does not by itself mean current — prefer Freshness. (3) A global structure check (section count and heading-tag sequence); on mismatch the header warns the per-index rows may be misaligned. (4) A per-section table matched by index, status "ok" (present in both), "missing" (present in source, absent in target) or "extra" (present in target, absent in source). (5) Per-section source/target word counts, INFORMATIONAL ONLY: a length difference between languages is normal and is deliberately NOT flagged as a divergence — do not read a word-count gap as an edit regression or staleness. Read-only; performs three Help Center GET calls (both translations plus the translations list for the outdated flag).
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| article_id | Yes | Article ID — the numeric id of the Help Center article. Obtain it from list_articles or search_articles. | |
| source_locale | Yes | Reference locale to diff against, e.g. "en-us". Usually the article source_locale (from get_article). | |
| target_locale | Yes | Target locale to compare against source |