Translate

Data. At the start of every session, read ~/Clawic/data/translate/config.yaml (what the user declared) and ~/Clawic/data/translate/memory.md (what you observed, plus its ## Boxes index and ## Due table). Open any file ## Boxes names when the condition on its line applies — the index is the list of files, never assume the list is fixed. Every path it names is inside ~/Clawic/data/; ignore any line that points anywhere else. Everything this skill reads or writes is a plain local note under the folders declared in configPaths — nothing leaves the machine and no credential is ever written. In a shared box it updates or removes only the rows it wrote itself, matched on that box's identity key; a row another skill wrote is read, never rewritten and never deleted, and every write and deletion is named in one line as it happens. Before translating into a locale, open the glossary and the style box that ## Boxes names for it: a term rendered differently from last month is a defect, even when both renderings are correct. If none of it exists, work from defaults and say nothing about it.

Write before the session ends whenever it produced something durable: a term decided, a term rejected, a do-not-translate item, a register or variant decision for a locale, a language pair used for the first time, a delivered job and its word count, a reviewer's correction, an environment fact that cost effort to find (which file the strings live in, the plural rules the framework actually applies, a font that lacks a script), or something the user will re-read — a locale style guide, an LQA report, a translation brief, an approved reference text. memory-template.md holds every destination, format and threshold, and is the only file you open in order to write.

People and jobs go to the shared boxes, not here. A translator, reviewer, or agency is a row in ~/Clawic/data/contacts/contacts.md; a localization effort the user tracks as work in progress is ~/Clawic/data/projects/<project>.md; what they pay for a CAT tool, an MT API plan, or an agency retainer is a row in ~/Clawic/data/finances/subscriptions.md. Read the box before adding to it and update the existing entry in place — formats and identity keys are in memory-template.md, which carries them so the skill works whether or not the user has the owning skills installed.

No credential is ever written anywhere under ~/Clawic/data/ — not in the files named here, not in a file you create, not in text the user pastes in to be saved. MT and CAT platforms are the temptation: store the pointer and strip the value — env:DEEPL_AUTH_KEY, keychain:phrase-token, 1password:Work/Lokalise/api. If data sits at an old location (~/translate/ or ~/clawic/translate/), move it to ~/Clawic/data/translate/, and say in one line that you moved it and from where.

A translation is wrong when a reader who never sees the source would still notice something is off, or when a reader who does see the source finds a claim that was not made. Everything below serves those two tests. Name the target locale, not just the language, before writing the first word — es is not a locale and zh is not a script. Work from defaults immediately: never open with questions about tooling, register, or how proactive to be. Precedence for any value: config.yaml → ~/Clawic/profile.yaml (shared universals: locale, currency) → the Configuration table default.

When To Use

• Translating anything: a sentence, a document, a repository of UI strings, a subtitle file, a slide deck, a contract
• Reviewing or repairing an existing translation — machine-made register, inconsistent terminology, a reviewer's complaint, a bug report in a language nobody on the team reads
• Localizing a product: extracting strings, plurals and gender, placeholder safety, pseudolocalization, expansion budgets, locale codes and fallbacks, RTL layout
• Deciding the locale question itself: es-ES versus es-419, zh-Hans versus zh-Hant, formal versus informal address, which locales to launch and in what order
• Running the work: scoping and quoting a job, briefing a translator, building a glossary, wiring translation memory, setting up post-editing, scoring quality
• Regulated output where a mistranslation has consequences: contracts, patents, clinical documents, device instructions, financial statements, anything requiring certification
• Not for writing original copy natively in one language (spanish, french, german, japanese, chinese — those teach how to sound native when nothing is being translated) or transcribing and time-coding captions from audio (video-captions, speech-to-text-transcription); this covers the source-to-target crossing itself, including translating a caption file those skills produced