Bilingual Paper Translator

Create a bilingual research paper

Produce both bilingual.html and a conventionally paginated bilingual.pdf. Preserve the original language and insert each target-language block immediately after its source block. Use the host agent's current model for translation; do not call sentence-level translation services.

Runtime

Use the shared Python environment in references/python-environment.md. In the commands below, PYTHON means that environment's interpreter command, not an environment variable. The renderer additionally needs Node.js, Playwright/Chromium, and Poppler. Install missing dependencies only with user approval.

Workflow

1. Create one temporary job directory outside this skill directory. Keep every acquisition, translation, rendering, and intermediate file for this paper in that directory.

2. Acquire and normalize exactly one paper:

   PYTHON scripts/paper_pipeline.py acquire INPUT -o JOB_DIR
   

   INPUT may be an existing local PDF or HTML file, an arXiv title/ID/URL, a DOI, an official paper page, or a direct PDF URL. A path-like input that does not exist is an error. Other URL schemes and unsupported local formats are errors.

   Explicit PDFs are processed directly and never replaced by a guessed arXiv source. DOI and official-page inputs follow redirects and use only one unambiguous PDF link; do not automate a browser, execute page JavaScript, guess private endpoints, or bypass login, consent, CAPTCHA, or paywalls. A downloaded PDF must have a %PDF- header. Other PDFs are converted to HTML with Docling; do not add a second OCR fallback.

   A plain title searches only the official arXiv API. The arXiv route has a strict priority: official HTML; otherwise downloadable TeX source, safe merge, and Docling; otherwise the official PDF only when TeX is absent. Never use a third-party mirror. If downloaded TeX cannot be merged or converted, stop instead of hiding the failure with a PDF fallback.

   Local HTML is copied to JOB_DIR/source.html. Local relative resources must remain inside the input HTML directory tree; path traversal, missing files, and empty files are fatal. Remote static resources are localized. Scripts are not executed. External hyperlinks remain external.

   Acquisition creates metadata.json and a redacted pipeline.log, records the actual source route and quality metrics, and rejects invalid/near-empty normalized HTML. Review any quality warnings before translation.

   Immediately rename the acquired job directory and use the printed path as JOB_DIR for every later step:

   PYTHON scripts/paper_pipeline.py organize JOB_DIR [--short-name SHORT_NAME]
   

   Pass --short-name when the paper has a known abbreviation or short title; prefer it to the full title. Otherwise the command uses an explicit abbreviation in the detected title, then the full detected title. It replaces characters forbidden by common filesystems (including Windows :, <, >, ", /, \, |, ?, and *), avoids Windows reserved device names and trailing dots/spaces, and limits the UTF-8 name length. If no reliable title is detected, stop and ask the user for SHORT_NAME. Do not continue translation in the temporary directory.

3. Extract the translation manifest:

   PYTHON scripts/paper_pipeline.py prepare JOB_DIR/source.html -o JOB_DIR
   

   Add --target-language LANGUAGE when needed; the default is Simplified Chinese. A user-supplied source-language statement is translation guidance, but no source language is assumed. If the source already appears to be the target language, ask the user to confirm.

   Optional switches are --translate-figures, --translate-tables, --translate-equations, and --translate-references; all default to off. Captions are always included. Disabled content must be absent from segments.json, not sent to the model for unchanged output. These switches affect exposed HTML text only; never OCR, overwrite, or redraw text inside bitmap images. Protected markup appears as ⟦KEEP_nnnn⟧.

4. Read all of JOB_DIR/segments.json before translating. Translate every source naturally into the recorded target language in one whole-paper model context. Preserve every id and every protected token exactly once in the proper semantic position. Return plain text, never HTML, in UTF-8 JOB_DIR/translations.json:

   {
     "translations": [
       {"id": "t00001", "translation": "Translation in the target language"}
     ]
   }
   

   JSON string values must not contain unescaped ASCII double quotes " (U+0022). Use Unicode curly quotes " (U+201C) / " (U+201D) for quoted terms in the translation text, or escape as \" when an ASCII double quote is genuinely needed.

   Do not silently split a paper into independent translation calls. If the complete manifest exceeds the current model context, stop and explain that this run cannot satisfy the whole-paper-context requirement.

5. Build the interleaved HTML:

   PYTHON scripts/paper_pipeline.py build JOB_DIR/segments.json JOB_DIR/translations.json -o JOB_DIR/bilingual.html
   

   The builder rejects missing or extra IDs, changed protected tokens, and model-generated HTML. Original blocks remain untouched and skipped content remains once in its original location.

6. Render the paginated PDF:

   node scripts/render_continuous_pdf.cjs JOB_DIR/bilingual.html JOB_DIR/bilingual.pdf
   

   The renderer defaults to A4 and 10pt text and creates bookmarks from h1–h6. It accepts --paper-size Letter, --margin-mm N, and --font-size N.

7. Verify both deliverables. Use pdfinfo, render representative first/middle/last pages with pdftoppm, and inspect pages containing formulas, figures, and tables. Confirm resources exist and are nonempty, same-paper anchors resolve, every translation ID is present, captions are bilingual, target-language fonts render, and PDF page size, pagination, and bookmarks are correct.

Deliver both bilingual.html and bilingual.pdf from the paper-named JOB_DIR. Keep all acquisition, translation, rendering, and intermediate files together there unless the user asks to remove them.