/adaptation

Translation

A translated edition is a separate story project: a copy of the source project with the prose translated, the same entity ids, and its own language and publishing metadata. Keeping the ids in English kebab-case means story links, story continuity, story timeline, story diagram, and story compare line up across editions, and a continuity fix in one edition can be found in the other by id.

Translation contracts, translator royalties and credit, and the right to license a translation are rights questions: see the publishing skill's rights inventory and contract checklist. Not legal advice.

Glossary As Term Base

The glossary is the translator's term base. Before translation starts, add a ## Translations section to every term that needs a fixed rendering:

---
term: "Second Light"
category: concept
aliases:
  - afterimage glow
pronunciation: SEK-und LYTE
---

# Second Light

The faint duplicate reflection visible in a person's eyes after unsafe
archive playback.

## Translations

- es: la Segunda Luz (capitalized; never "segunda luz" in dialogue)
- de: das Zweitlicht (neuter; coined compound)
- fr: la Seconde Lueur (not "lumière": the word must suggest faintness)

• Record the reason when a choice is not obvious; the next translator needs it.
• Cover invented words, titles and ranks, forms of address, place names, faction names, units, and recurring phrases (oaths, sayings, catchphrases).
• Add terms the glossary lacks: story add term "Name" --category <category>.

Names

For each character, location, and faction name, decide with the author and translator:

• Keep the original (the default for most personal names).
• Adapt spelling or diacritics for the target language's readers.
• Translate speaking names whose meaning matters to the story (Blackwater, Mistress Thornquill).
• Transliterate into a different script by a consistent standard.

Record the decision in the entity's body in the source project. In the translated project, set name (and aliases) to the translated form; the id does not change. Check new names for clashes in the translated project:

story names "Zweitlicht" "Schwarzwasser" --path ../book-de

Update pronunciation in the translated project for its narrator.

Per-Language Style Sheet

Each edition gets its own style-sheet.md. Set dialect: unspecified unless the target is British or American English, and use preferred, watch-words, and the body for:

• Quotation style: « » with spaces in French, „ " or » « in German, em-dash dialogue in Spanish and many other languages
• Formal and informal address (tu/vous, du/Sie, tú/usted) per character pair, and when it changes in the story
• Numbers, dates, units, and currency: convert or keep
• Profanity and register levels per character
• Treatment of foreign words already in the source (italics or not)

Record the tu/vous-style decisions per relationship: a switch from formal to informal can be a plot beat, and it must happen in the same chapter in every edition.

Setting Up The Edition

1. Copy the source project folder to a new folder (../book-de), leaving out dist/ and any submission/, publishing/, or adaptations/ files that do not apply.
2. In the new story.md, set language (BCP 47: de, es-MX, pt-BR), and clear isbn, publisher, publication-date, description, keywords, and subjects for the new edition's own values. Every edition needs its own ISBN. Set chapter-label (the word for "Chapter", such as Kapitel; a {n} places the number, as in 第{n}章) and contents-label (such as Inhalt) so the built headings and table of contents are not in English. The review-copy note, the narration credits, and the metadata sheet stay in English; translate the narration credits by hand in the built script.
3. Remove series, book-number, follows, and precedes from the copied story.md. Those fields are for different books in a series, and copied values point at the source series, which breaks story links and story series for the new edition. Do not use them to link the editions. A translated series links its own translated books the same way the source series does.
4. Translate titles and prose in place, chapter by chapter, keeping every file name and id.
5. If AI or machine translation is used at any stage, record it in ai-disclosure; some retailers require disclosure of machine translation. Check their current policy.

Continuity Across Editions

After each batch of translated chapters:

story wordcount ../book-de --write
story validate ../book-de
story links ../book-de
story continuity ../book-de
story compare ../book-de --against .

story compare reports chapters added or removed between the editions; the word and paragraph changes are expected and can be ignored. Also check:

• Every chapter and scene file exists in both editions
• Glossary terms rendered as the term base says (search the translated chapters for each term)
• chapter-label and contents-label set, and a built EPUB or print interior checked for leftover English labels
• Chapter titles, epigraphs, and matter pages translated, with permissions cleared for the new language (quoted material may need a separate permission or an existing published translation)
• Word count differences are plausible: many languages run longer than English, so page counts and the cover spine change
• Revisions to the source after translation began are listed and carried across by chapter id

When the source changes, list the changed chapter ids (story compare . --ref <tag> in the source project) and hand them to the translator.