Translate Skill — Instructions in English, UTF-8 Output

Translates an existing Agent Skill from language A to language B. All instructions in this skill are written in English. Output files are UTF-8.

When to use this skill

• User provides a SKILL.md (as file, URL, or pasted text) and a target language
• User wants a language variant of an existing skill
• User wants non-English speakers to benefit from an existing skill
• User wants to create translate-skill-<lang>-utf8 variants of this very skill

What gets translated

Step-by-Step Workflow

Step 1 — Identify source

• Accept: a file path, a raw GitHub URL, or pasted SKILL.md content
• If a URL is given, fetch it with web_fetch
• Read all bundled files in references/, scripts/, assets/ if present

Step 2 — Confirm parameters

Ask (or infer from context):

1. Source language — what language is the skill currently written in?
2. Target language — what language should the output be in?
3. Output skill name — default: append -<lang-code>-utf8 to original name

• Example: translate-skill-en → translate-skill-de

1. Output location — where to write the translated skill directory?

Step 3 — Translate SKILL.md

Rules:

• Preserve all YAML frontmatter keys exactly
• Translate description value fully into target language
• Add or update metadata.instruction-language to reflect target language code
• Keep metadata.encoding: utf-8
• Translate all prose in the body
• Keep all code blocks, file paths, URLs, and command examples untouched
• Keep the name field untouched

Step 4 — Translate bundled files

For each file in references/, scripts/, assets/:

• Translate prose, comments, help text
• Leave code logic, variable names, command syntax untouched
• Save with identical filename in the translated skill directory

Step 5 — Write output

Create the translated skill directory:

<translated-skill-name>/
├── SKILL.md              # translated
├── references/           # translated (if present)
├── scripts/              # translated comments (if present)
└── assets/               # translated text assets (if present)

All files saved as UTF-8.

Step 6 — Validate

Check:

• [ ] name field unchanged
• [ ] No untranslated prose remaining in SKILL.md body
• [ ] Code blocks intact
• [ ] UTF-8 encoding confirmed (especially for non-Latin scripts)
• [ ] metadata.instruction-language updated

Step 7 — Present

Output the translated skill directory for download. Briefly summarize: source language → target language, files translated, any ambiguous terms that were left in source language with a note.

Translation Quality Notes

• Prefer natural phrasing over literal word-for-word translation
• Technical terms (e.g. "skill", "agent", "SKILL.md", "frontmatter") may be

kept in English if no natural equivalent exists — add a short note in parentheses

• Trigger phrases in the description should feel natural to a native speaker

of the target language — rephrase idiomatically

• UTF-8 note: All target languages, including those with non-Latin scripts

(Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, etc.), are supported via UTF-8 encoding

Example invocations

"Translate this skill to German"
→ source: en, target: de, output name: <original>-de-utf8

"Create a French version of translate-skill-en"
→ source: en, target: fr, output name: translate-skill-fr-utf8

"Port this SKILL.md to Japanese"
→ source: en, target: ja, output name: <original>-ja-utf8

Self-application: creating language variants of this skill

This skill can translate itself. To create translate-skill-de:

1. Use translate-skill-en as source
2. Set target language: German (de)
3. Output name: translate-skill-de
4. The resulting skill is identical in function, but all instructions are in German

This skill follows the [agentskills.io open specification](https://agentskills.io/specification).