---
name: legion-transcreation-skill-builder
description: Create or revise a transcreation skill for the person's chosen language, locale, audience, and writing needs. Use to build a reusable language capability; use the resulting locale skill for actual translations.
metadata:
  source-skill: transcreate-taiwanese-mandarin
  source-sha256: "b26ab6ffc083532e73858fd0ed517946a8376596def2b1981634c89453cc005f"
  edition: "2026-09-06"
---

# Build a Transcreation Skill

Create a reusable skill that carries an author's thought into the language and culture of its intended readers.

Read [the thought-equivalence method](references/thought-equivalence.md) in full. It supplies the method to preserve. The language-specific knowledge must be developed for the actual audience.

## Establish the commission

Identify the target language, region, script where relevant, intended audience, kinds of writing, and desired voice. Use existing context and ask only for distinctions that materially change the skill. An interface for French-speaking users and essays for readers in Quebec need different attention even where their language overlaps.

Learn what the person translates repeatedly and examine a representative example when available. Identify exact material such as quotations, names, technical identifiers, and legal wording whose treatment differs from ordinary prose. Preserve any publication-specific language choices as local choices.

## Develop the locale guidance

Research suitable primary language authorities, corpora, and editorial usage for the target audience. Verify the relevant sources and put usable links in the generated skill. Describe the register, vocabulary, punctuation, forms of address, and cultural expectations that materially affect this person's work. Keep disputed or evolving choices revisable.

Use examples that demonstrate real distinctions. Describe what native prose does with a thought, how its structure differs from common translationese, and which neighboring locale defaults could mislead this audience. Local knowledge should govern those decisions, rather than a find-and-replace of another language's rules.

## Build the skill for the installed agent

Use the agent's supported skill-authoring and installation capabilities. In Codex, use its available skill-creator guidance. Choose a discriminating locale-specific name, a clear activation description, and supporting references only where useful. Preserve the person's existing skills and reconcile overlaps deliberately.

Give the generated skill distinct paths for short interface copy, ordinary prose, and substantial editorial work. Carry the full method into the generated skill or its own supporting reference so it remains usable independently of this builder.

For interface copy, begin from the control's purpose, surrounding state, space, and reader expectations. For ordinary prose, map meaning, compose naturally, compare against the source, and edit in a later invocation. For substantial work, add independent target-only reconstruction and locale review using the separation described in the reference.

The method preserves claims, relationships, intended implications, voice, humor, emotional movement, ambiguity, and confidence. Sentence structure and paragraphing can change to carry those things well. Separate any authorized adaptation of the argument from faithful transcreation.

## Try the resulting capability

Validate the skill with the installed agent's normal tooling, including its referenced resources and discovery. Use a representative passage to exercise its instructions. Where practical, include something whose meaning depends on a qualifier, a joke, a cultural reference, or an implicit relationship.

Use a genuinely independent reader for the blind reconstruction when that capability is available and authorized. Give that reader only the target text and the relevant audience context. Compare what reached them with the source thought map. A context that has already seen the source can do useful comparison, but is not a blind reader.

Fix material failures revealed by the example and preserve the decisions useful for subsequent work. Report what was exercised, which reviews actually happened, and what remains for the person's judgment. The resulting skill should be ready to use for their next real piece of writing.