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T1KTheOneKit

t1k:translate

FieldValue
Modulet1k-extended
Version2.21.0
Effortmedium
Tools—

Keywords: code-switch, diacritics, dịch, dịch thuật, en-vi, english to vietnamese, loanword, localization, localize, machine translation tell, natural translation, not word by word, register, render vietnamese pdf, sounds like google translate, tiếng việt, transcreation, translate, translation, vi-en, vietnamese, vietnamese to english

How to invoke

Section titled “How to invoke”
/t1k:translate
<source-file-or-text> [--to vi|en|<lang>] [--mode doc|contract|marketing|ui|email] [--render]

Translate — Read as Natively Written, Never Word-by-Word

Section titled “Translate — Read as Natively Written, Never Word-by-Word”

Machine/AI translation defaults to swapping words in place. The result is grammatical but foreign — it “sounds like Google Translate.” This skill makes a translation read as if a native writer wrote it from scratch, while keeping every fact, number, and defined term exact.

Flagship pair: English ↔ Vietnamese. The method is general; the deep guides are VI-first.

When to use

Section titled “When to use”

Activate before translating any document, email, UI string, or marketing copy — and when a draft translation “sounds translated.” Especially any English↔Vietnamese work.

The one rule

Section titled “The one rule”

Translate the MEANING, not the words. Ask “how would a native writer say this idea from scratch?” — not “what is the word for each source word?” Restructure freely: split/merge sentences, reorder information, change voice. Naturalness wins except where precision must (see Domain modes).

Process — run every time, in order

Section titled “Process — run every time, in order”
  1. Comprehend the whole first. Read the entire source. Fix in mind: literal meaning, intent (what the reader should do/feel), audience, register, domain. Never translate a sentence in isolation before you understand the whole.
  2. Flag the hard bits. Idioms, cultural refs, puns, defined/legal terms, numbers, proper nouns, jargon, ambiguous pronouns/tense. Decide per item: keep literal (precision) vs re-express (natural).
  3. Pick the register FIRST. Choose formality and — for Vietnamese — the pronoun/address pair before drafting. This is a decision, not a default. (VI has no neutral “you”.)
  4. Draft thinking natively. Compose in the target language as a native would. Reorder, restructure, change active/passive — do not mirror source syntax.
  5. Back-check for drift. Nothing added, dropped, or reversed; tone preserved; every number, date, amount, and defined term intact and consistent.
  6. Read aloud for naturalness. Any phrase a native reader would flag as “translated” → rewrite.
  7. QA pass. Run the checklist in references/en-vi-linguistics.md § QA.

Domain modes — how much freedom

Section titled “Domain modes — how much freedom”
ModeFreedomRule
contract / legalLow — precision winsDefined terms exact + consistent, clause structure preserved, never “improve” wording. Numbers/caps/law verbatim.
doc / technicalMediumNatural prose, but terms/numbers exact and consistent 1:1.
marketing / transcreationHigh — recreate the effectRe-invent taglines/CTAs/puns for the same emotion; discard literal words.
ui / microcopyMedium + length limitsFit the control; keep terse; consistent term set.
email / messageMediumMatch the author’s voice; pair with t1k-human-writing.

Precision always wins for: numbers, dates, currency, amounts, IDs, defined/glossary terms, proper nouns, code — carry verbatim; only reformat presentation when localization is wanted, never the value.

Keep-in-English (loanword) rule — critical for VI

Section titled “Keep-in-English (loanword) rule — critical for VI”

VI tech/gaming/business/marketing speech is heavily code-switched. Over-translating is the #1 failure mode — forcing invented Vietnamese for terms professionals never translate reads stiff and wrong.

  • Keep English when that is what practitioners say out loud: playable, landing page, microsite, brief, campaign, dashboard, deliverable, KPI, CPM/CPI/ROAS, deadline, feedback, deploy, build, P&L, COGS, markup, margin, sign-off, SOW, publisher.
  • Translate where a settled native term is what the team actually uses: revenue → doanh thu, gross profit → lợi nhuận gộp, deposit → đặt cọc, discount → chiết khấu/giảm giá, data capture → thu thập dữ liệu, consent → sự đồng ý.
  • Test: “Would a VI professional in this field say the English or the VI word out loud?” Match that.
  • Never transliterate (invent VI spellings of English words). Keep the English, or use the real VI term.

Full term-by-term table (with the ⚠️ traps like discount floor = max discount, transfer price ≠ “chuyển giá”): references/vi-business-register.md.

Anti-patterns (the machine-translation tells)

Section titled “Anti-patterns (the machine-translation tells)”
  • Word-for-word / mirrored source syntax; no topic-fronting.
  • VI: stamping đã/đang/sẽ on every verb; generic tôi/bạn everywhere (register never shifts); over-inserting của/một/các/những; English-shaped or wrong-valence passives (được for a bad thing); wrong/absent classifiers; missing or wrong diacritics.
  • Translating do-not-translate terms (playable → “quảng cáo chơi thử”).
  • Broken diacritics / tofu boxes in the rendered PDF (wrong font).
  • Em-dash slop and other AI tells (see t1k-human-writing).

Deep EN↔VI linguistics + the full AI-tells list + QA checklist: references/en-vi-linguistics.md.

Numbers, currency, dates (VI)

Section titled “Numbers, currency, dates (VI)”

VI inverts the Anglo separators: thousands = ., decimal = , (e.g. 1.234.567,89). VND is zero-decimal (70.000.000 ₫). In prose use magnitude words — “70 triệu”, “1,5 tỷ” — not full digits. Dates DD/MM/YYYY. ⚠️ 20.000 = twenty-thousand in VI but twenty-point-zero in the US — always label the currency when both appear. Details: references/vi-business-register.md § Formatting.

Render workflow (Vietnamese-safe PDF/DOCX)

Section titled “Render workflow (Vietnamese-safe PDF/DOCX)”

When --render (or the source is a rendered doc), produce a VN-safe PDF. Wrong fonts break Vietnamese (missing precomposed glyphs → tofu / “ransom note”).

  1. Save .md/.html as UTF-8; normalize text to NFC (precomposed).
  2. Use a Vietnamese-complete font: Be Vietnam Pro or Inter (embed via @font-face), or the installed Noto Sans / Noto Serif fallback. NEVER Poppins (no VI subset — known broken).
  3. Render md → HTML(+VN-font CSS) → PDF via weasyprint (deterministic embedding). Avoid the pdflatex engine for VI; if LaTeX is required use xelatex with a VI main font.
  4. Verify: render the test string and eyeball zero tofu / uniform weight, then confirm embedding. 
    Nghĩ kỹ trước khi quyết định; ưu tiên chất lượng. Tự động hoá quy trình, giữ nguyên bản sắc.
    (covers ĩ ỹ ướ ế ị ả ự đ ữ ắ — the horn+tone and circumflex+tone stacks). Then pdffonts out.pdf → each VI font shows emb=yes.

Full pipeline + font table + gotchas: references/typography-rendering.md.

References

Section titled “References”
Section titled “Related”
  • t1k-human-writing — strip AI tells / match voice (run after translating prose).
  • t1k-contract — render Markdown → HTML/DOCX/PDF (use the VN font stack here for VI docs).
  • t1k-contract-review — for translated contracts, verify no legal-meaning drift.