Vietnamese calibration — a small ask to fix the register

For the native reviewer. Goal: teach the AI what natural modern Vietnamese sounds like, by example — not to hand-translate the whole dictionary.

What happened

We bulk-translated the Tsumugu dictionary into Vietnamese with AI. You caught the problem at once: it reads old-fashioned — “as if written by an old person.” You’re right, and it’s across the board. The AI translates accurately but can’t hear register, so it defaulted to formal/literary Vietnamese.

What we need — and what we don’t

We do not need you to translate or rewrite thousands of entries. We need you to show the AI the target voice by example, then it redoes everything in that voice and you only spot-check. Two small jobs:

Job 1 — Rewrite ~30 entries (about an afternoon). We’ll hand you ~30 current entries spanning the types. For each, rewrite it the way you’d actually say it — everyday, modern, how a 25-year-old talks. Keep the meaning; fix the voice. Paste the original and your version so we can see the before → after.

• Mix of: short definitions, the “story” explanations (the worst offenders — they came out poetic/archaic), example sentences, and the menu/page text.
• Problems you already flagged: lâm sản → just gỗ · cáo từ → xin phép về / từ biệt · “lời nói hóa ngọt” → something a person would really say.

Job 2 — later, spot-check ~50 (about 30 min). Once we re-translate everything using your rewrites as the model, skim 50 random entries and mark each ok / awkward / wrong with a quick note. That tells us whether it’s ready to publish.

Why this is enough

Your 30 rewrites become gold examples the AI matches against — five real examples teach it more than any instruction can. It then redoes all ~2,600 entries in that voice, and your 50-entry sample is the safety net. Small input, whole-corpus payoff.

Optional, very helpful

If there are words you’d always swap (formal → everyday), jot a quick list — it becomes a permanent do/don’t rule baked into the style guide.

Thank you — this is the one thing the AI genuinely can’t do without you.