Translation prompt — what to settle before the language pair

What makes this hard

'Translate this into Korean' fixes only the language pair. What actually divides translation work is what is being translated. Marketing copy and contracts have opposite rules. The first may restructure sentences for flow. In the second, one shifted nuance is an incident.

Left without instructions, three things happen quietly. Company and product names get translated at will, cultural references and wordplay vanish or turn stiff without a note, and ambiguous passages get resolved by the AI's own interpretation. None of the three is visible from the output alone.

What to add to the request

1. Give the do-not-touch list

A table of fixed translations, names left untranslated, and rules for numbers, units, and dates. A short list is fine. Its existence alone signals 'don't change the rest freely either.'

2. Set the literal-vs-free dial and the register

'Make it natural' is not an instruction. Decide whether sentence structure may change and what formality level to hit, from the document's use and reader. Add that one source sentence becoming two target sentences is not an error. That line prevents artificially glued-together long sentences.

3. Ambiguity gets flagged, not resolved

What the finished instruction contains

• Translation brief — register, the literal-to-free setting, and prohibitions
• A term and proper-noun table — what gets a fixed translation and what stays untranslated
• Rules for cultural references — explain, substitute, or footnote
• Delivery format — whether the source is shown alongside
• The translation, then translator's notes — only for passages the source alone can't settle; if there are none, 'no ambiguous passages'

Review results never go into the deliverable. The check runs before hand-off and whatever it catches gets fixed, so only the final text is delivered. A pass/fail table is a work report, not the reader's document. Translator's notes are different: they're the passages you have to judge against the source, so they stay.

Seven kinds — what is being translated

The Translation studio takes seven lanes: general documents, literary and creative work, scripts and subtitles, meeting notes and transcripts, marketing copy, technical documents, and contracts or official documents. The language pair can be identical while the rules are opposites.

• General document — register is set from the document's use and reader first; paragraph structure is kept, but sentence length follows the target language's habits
• Literary and creative — what must survive is the voice, not the information. Where form is meaning, as with wordplay or rhythm, it either finds a device with the same effect, keeps the meaning and adds a note, or shows the original alongside, and says which it chose. Each character's way of speaking stays distinct
• Script and subtitles — length is the constraint. Subtitles get a per-line character limit and a line cap first, and overflow is trimmed in order: modifiers, then repetition, then forms of address. Dubbing matches syllable count and where sentences end. Every line has to be speakable aloud
• Meeting notes and transcripts — transcribing and tidying are never mixed. Rendering 'that might be a little difficult' as 'that's impossible' changes the meeting's conclusion, so hedges are carried into the target language's hedges, and speakers stay distinguished
• Marketing copy — the one kind where literal translation fails. It carries the effect, not the meaning, and says what it changed. It never adds claims or figures the source doesn't have, and only names which advertising rules may apply
• Technical document — term consistency outranks style. UI strings, commands, and code stay in the original, procedures become one imperative action per sentence, and warning language is never softened
• Contract or official document — no paraphrase. Clause numbers, structure, and sentence boundaries are kept, legal-term equivalence is never asserted, and if the document has legal effect, a notice that professional translation and legal review are needed goes at the very top

Checklist for writing it yourself

1. 1Did you say what's being translated (contract, marketing, technical doc, subtitles)
2. 2Did you give the fixed-term and proper-noun table
3. 3Did you set fidelity and register
4. 4Did you forbid additions and omissions
5. 5Did you define how ambiguity is handled (notes)