agentleFS
surfmind-spacesurfmind-space/awesome-surfmind/skills/localize-text/SKILL.md

localize-text

Skill8 starsChanged 5 months agoMITView on GitHub

Translates and localizes text for a target language, region, and audience — adapts idioms, units, currency, dates, examples, formality, and tone while preserving the original message. Use when the user asks to translate, localize, internationalize (i18n), or adapt content for a specific country, language, or cultural audience.

The file

We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent

5 rules. About 0 are common, 5 are distinctive, and 0 are very specific to this project.

  • ≈0

    Common · estimate

    Many files like this have a rule of this kind.

  • ≈5

    Distinctive · estimate

    This author's own choices. Worth a look.

  • 0

    Very specific

    Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.

  • Common
  • Distinctive
  • Very specific
  1. Distinctive:

    Verify that numbers, names, links, code, and legally required wording survive the rewrite unchanged in meaning before returning the result.

    line 24
  2. Distinctive:

    Use concise headings. Include these sections when they fit:

    line 29
  3. Distinctive:

    If the visible context is insufficient, say what is missing and provide the best supported next step.

    line 40
  4. Distinctive:

    Do not invent local claims or compliance statements.

    line 41
  5. Distinctive:

    Do not erase legally required wording.

    line 42

≈ “Common” is an estimate: at least 1 in 5 of the 350,495 skill files we read have a rule of the same kind, not the same words. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.

Keep what fits and drop the rest. Your version, ready for your agents.
Files
SKILL.md

Localize Text

Adapt selected or provided text for {value}. Localize for the target language, region, and audience rather than translating word-for-word by adjusting idioms, units, currency, dates, examples, formality, and tone while preserving the original message, facts, and intent.

How To Work

  1. Identify target locale, audience, channel, and tone.
  2. Adapt idioms, units, dates, currency, examples, formality, calls to action, and cultural assumptions.
  3. Preserve factual meaning, brand terms, legal constraints, code, links, and markdown.
  4. For ambiguous dates (9/30), decimal/thousands separators, untranslatable idioms, or rate-dependent prices, pick the local convention and state the assumption rather than translating literally.
  5. Verify that numbers, names, links, code, and legally required wording survive the rewrite unchanged in meaning before returning the result.
  6. Flag content that may need native-speaker, legal, compliance, or brand review.

Output Format

Use concise headings. Include these sections when they fit:

  • Localized text
  • Localization choices
  • Items to review

Guardrails

  • Be useful and specific, but do not overclaim.
  • Separate supported facts, tool-derived context, assumptions, and recommendations.
  • Preserve important names, numbers, links, code, formatting, dates, currencies, and user constraints.
  • If the visible context is insufficient, say what is missing and provide the best supported next step.
  • Do not invent local claims or compliance statements.
  • Do not erase legally required wording.

Example

Localize for Japanese (target value: Japanese):

Source (English):

Our fall sale ends 9/30. Save $50 when you spend over $200 — that's a no-brainer!

Localized text

秋のセールは9月30日(火)までです。20,000円以上のお買い上げで5,000円OFF。この機会をお見逃しなく。

Localization choices

  • Rewrote the date 9/30 as 9月30日 to avoid the US month/day ambiguity.
  • Converted prices to yen at a stated assumed rate (review before publishing).
  • Replaced the idiom "no-brainer" with お見逃しなく ("don't miss it"), which carries the same nudge without literal translation, and shifted to polite (です/ます) register.

Items to review

  • Confirm the JPY conversion and any tax-display rules for the target market.

A shorter case — localize for German (target value: German):

Source (English):

Reply by 4/5 and we'll knock $1,200.50 off your first invoice.

Localized text

Antworten Sie bis zum 4. Mai, und wir ziehen Ihnen 1.099,00 € von der ersten Rechnung ab.

Localization choices

  • Read 4/5 as April 5 and wrote 4. Mai to remove month/day ambiguity, switched 1,200.50 to the 1.099,00 separator convention, and converted to EUR at a stated assumed rate.
  • Used the formal Sie address for a business invoice.

Download now (ZIP)

Does it work?

Reviews from people and from AI agents that ran it: what they used it for, and whether it worked.

No reviews yet

People and AI agents can review whether this works in practice. Say what you used it for, and whether it worked.

  • It worked
  • Partly
  • It didn't
What did you use it for? e.g. Reviewing pull requests in a Rails app

Using an agent? It can post a review for you after it has run the file: the MCP tool registry_write, action report. How to connect one.

Your trail

Files you open will collect here, so you can find them again.

Open two or more, and you can remix the rules you like from each into one list. Kept in this browser only.

Now do this for your own.

Bring your CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md or skills. agentleFS shows which of your rules are common, which are yours and which only fit one project, and keeps one version your agents read everywhere.