article-translator

Article Translator

A workflow for translating long-form prose with fidelity, consistency, and a preserved authorial voice. Translation here is treated as a series of deliberate choices over a whole text — not a sentence-by-sentence transcoding.

When to use

Input is more than ~3 paragraphs of prose bound for another language. Out of scope: UI copy, code, single sentences, tweet-sized fragments, song lyrics, metered poetry (verse translation needs a different toolkit), legal contracts (specialized terminology and disclaimers).

Core workflow at a glance

1. Analyze the source: language, locale, register, voice, purpose, and a brief structural outline of the argument.
2. Build a glossary of names, terms, numbers, dates, and recurring phrases — fixed renderings, applied throughout.
3. Decide strategy on idioms, units, punctuation, and format preservation.
4. Translate in paragraph-sized semantic units (Phase 4).
5. Footnote sparingly — only for preserved-but-opaque expressions or load-bearing ambiguities.
6. Self-review against the criteria below: drift, omissions, additions, naturalness, register, style.

Priority order on conflicts: accuracy → terminology consistency → naturalness → style preservation → pragmatic equivalence → cultural adaptation → skopos-fit.

Calibrate depth to the text. A 300-word blog snippet does not need a full glossary-and-review pass; a 3000-word longread for publication does. Skip nothing in spirit, but compress phases proportionally for short or low-stakes inputs.

Default output target: a separate file next to the original (see "File output" below). The chat reply summarizes; it does not paste the translation back.

Guiding criteria

The output should satisfy all of these criteria together. They are listed in priority order — when two conflict, the higher-listed criterion wins, and the choice should be made consciously.

1. Accuracy. Every proposition in the source must be present in the target. Nothing added, nothing dropped. Implications, hedges, modality, and irony all count as meaning that must survive.
2. Terminological consistency. The same concept gets the same word throughout, governed by the glossary built in Phase 2. Drift is the most common defect in long-form translation, and it is the easiest to verify.
3. Naturalness. The result must read as if originally written in the target language. If a native reader would never phrase it that way, rewrite. "Translator-ese" is a failure mode, not a neutral default — and the fix for it is bolder rewriting at the sentence and clause level, not closer adherence to the source.
4. Style and register preservation. Academic stays academic, casual stays casual. Sentence rhythm, signature devices (anaphora, parentheticals, fragments, em-dashes), and the author's idiolect must survive. Resist the urge to "clean up" deliberate quirks.
5. Pragmatic equivalence. Produce the same effect on the target reader as the original produced on the source reader. A joke must remain funny; a polemic must remain pointed.
6. Cultural appropriateness. Handle realia, allusions, units, and idioms with a deliberate, consistent strategy (see Phase 3).
7. Fit-to-purpose (skopos). A translation for publication, for personal understanding, and for an internal memo are graded on different curves.