Weksa/docs/multilingual-utterance-lowering.md

Multilingual Utterance Lowering

Version: 0.1-draft

Weksa can lower one structured utterance intent into multiple human-language realizations without making English the hidden source of truth.

interlingua packet
  -> projected speaker-local context
  -> utterance lowering request
  -> target-language realization packets

The first targets are English, Brazilian Portuguese (pt-BR), and Japanese (ja). These targets prove the middle of the machine before alien-language rendering gets to hide failures under unfamiliar surface forms.

Objective

Produce target-language dialogue from a shared meaning packet while preserving:

• source referents and predications
• speaker-local knowledge boundaries
• target-language cultural ontology
• target-language register and obligatory expression
• traceability from output back to interlingua and projected context

Authority

The interlingua packet owns:

• what is meant
• referents, predications, relations, discourse, constraints, and provenance
• source-side uncertainty

The projected speaker context owns:

• what the speaker knows, believes, remembers, wants, and can express
• voice pressure, relationship stance, embodiment, and presentation limits

The utterance lowerer owns:

• selecting target-language surface text
• preserving required meaning and constraints
• obeying speaker-local context
• applying the target-language cultural ontology profile
• marking target-language register and realization choices
• emitting backglosses, backtranslations, and lowering trace

The utterance lowerer does not own:

• new facts
• raw agent-state internals
• target-language alien forms
• speech synthesis
• phoneme parity or synth-control truth

The target-language cultural ontology profile owns:

• address, politeness, register, and social stance distinctions
• idiom and metaphor risks
• script or orthographic choices that carry meaning
• forbidden flattenings for that target

It does not own source meaning. It tells the lowerer what distinctions must be inspected before surface text is chosen.

Target Languages

English

English remains a lowering target, not the pivot language. Existing flavored English fixtures continue to be useful, but new multilingual fixtures should show English as one realization in a set.

The initial cultural ontology profile is data/target-language-ontology/en-US.yaml.

Brazilian Portuguese

Portuguese must be explicit about locale. The initial target is pt-BR, not a generic Portuguese bucket.

The target lowerer should record:

• locale: pt-BR
• target cultural ontology profile stack used
• treatment choice where relevant
• whether dialogue uses direct or softened imperatives
• idiom choices that are Brazilian Portuguese rather than European Portuguese defaults
• optional regional or cultural overlays when the source context earns them

The initial cultural ontology profile is data/target-language-ontology/pt-BR.yaml.

Umbanda-related scenes, speakers, ritual contexts, or referents may add the data/target-language-ontology/pt-BR-umbanda.yaml overlay. That overlay must not activate for generic Brazilian flavor.

Regional or cultural variants should be selected through the overlay catalog at data/target-language-ontology/pt-BR-overlays.yaml. Planned overlay slots are not active profiles until reviewed examples and source context exist.

Japanese

Japanese must be explicit about register and relationship stance. Politeness, sentence-final force, omitted subjects, and address terms are realization choices, not decoration.

The target lowerer should record:

• locale: ja-JP when a locale value is needed
• target cultural ontology profile used
• register such as plain, polite, rough, or technical
• whether subject omission preserves or harms clarity
• whether katakana, kanji, kana, or mixed script choices carry useful pressure

The initial cultural ontology profile is data/target-language-ontology/ja-JP.yaml.

Packet Shape

schema_version: weksa.utterance_lowering.v0
source_packet_id:
target_agent_id:
agent_state_ref:
projected_context_ref:
lowering_controls:
  output_mode: dialogue
  preserve_referents:
  preserve_predications:
  allow_inference:
  max_line_count:
realizations:
  - realization_id:
    target_language:
      code:
      locale:
      script:
      register:
      cultural_ontology_refs:
    outputs:
      visible_action:
      spoken_text:
      literal_backgloss:
      natural_backtranslation:
      private_interpretation:
      intended_effect:
      trace:

Output Contract

Each realization should emit:

• spoken_text: target-language dialogue.
• visible_action: optional observable behavior around the line.
• literal_backgloss: close structural gloss for reviewers.
• natural_backtranslation: natural English restatement for review only.
• private_interpretation: what the speaker thinks they are doing.
• intended_effect: what the speaker wants the line to do.
• trace: source fields, target-language decisions, and unresolved questions.

Backtranslations are review aids. They are not new source meaning, and later targets must not be lowered from them.

Trace should name the cultural ontology axes that shaped the line, especially where the target language requires a social or register choice the source packet does not spell out.

First Proof

The first proof uses the existing Nibu warning intent:

do not touch the damaged ship control, because doing so may endanger you

The output set should include:

• English flavored by Nibu's projected context
• pt-BR with direct warning force and Brazilian Portuguese idiom
• Japanese with sharp, technically precise plain-register force

The proof fails if any target loses the damaged control, the player risk, or Nibu's intervention. It also fails if the target line becomes generic assistant politeness or random cruelty.