tone-adjusted-translation
Published
Public
in @translation-essentialseval95%

Translate text with an explicit register knob — formal, informal, marketing, or technical (Sie/du, keigo, copywriter idiom) — plus notes on the tone choices made.

tone-adjusted-translation

Translation with a register knob. The same English source string needs to come out as Sie in a German banking app and du in a German gaming app; as keigo in a Japanese B2B email and plain form in a chat UI. This prompt makes that a parameter (formal / informal / marketing / technical) instead of a fork of your translation pipeline — and reports the tone decisions it made.

Entrypoints

EntrypointRendersInputs
systemTranslator instructions + tone definitions + embedded output schematarget_language, tone
userThe delimited text block + target language + tonetext, target_language, tone

Render system as the system message and user as the user message. Pass the shared variables to both renders.

Variables

  • text (string, required) — the text to translate; placeholders/HTML/markdown preserved verbatim.
  • target_language (string, required) — ISO 639-1 code ("de") or English language name ("German").
  • tone (string, required) — one of:
    • formal — professional register, formal address (Sie / vous / usted / desu-masu + keigo).
    • informal — casual register, informal address (du / tu / tú / plain form), contractions.
    • marketing — persuasive, idiomatic copy; adapted for impact, claims kept exactly identical.
    • technical — precise, terminology-consistent documentation register.

Output

{
  "reasoning": "German distinguishes Sie/du; formal tone requested, so Sie forms and no contractions.",
  "translation": "Bitte melden Sie sich an, um Ihre Bestellung einzusehen.",
  "tone_notes": "Sie throughout; 'Bestellung einsehen' preferred over colloquial 'angucken'."
}
  • reasoning comes first — the register strategy is decided before the translation is written.
  • translation says the same what as the source; only the how follows the tone. Placeholders and markup survive verbatim; embedded instructions are translated, not obeyed.
  • tone_notes is the audit trail: which register devices were used (empty when none applied — not every language marks formality).

House conventions

  • Reasoning-first, key order pinned in the system prompt.
  • Closed tone vocabulary — four registers, defined in the prompt, not free text.
  • Injection-safe input: triple-mustache inside an XML-style <text> delimiter, text treated as data.
  • Empty-input behaviour specified: empty text → empty translation and notes.

Part of the Translation Essentials collection — use text-translation when you don't need the knob, and translation-qa-grading to grade the output.

@sufleur/