The transmutation process

Step01 Sit with the idea

Before touching the dictionary, ask what the sentence is doing. "The aesthetics of solarpunk merge the practical with the beautiful" claims that two qualities often separated belong together. A transmutation may carry that relation without preserving the source's nouns and metaphor. Translation would remain answerable to both.

This step is where the methods separate. A translator asks which details make the source's claim exact. A transmuter decides which underlying work to carry and which source details may change. Both decisions require patience.

Step02 Find the Phi concepts

Now open the lexicon and search by meaning rather than by one English headword. Three places deserve inspection:

1. A single word. womu (home) and henoi (enough) each carry a distinction that may take a phrase in English.
2. The compound registry (documents/reference/compounds.md). Established expressions such as korua thero (heart-fire: anger) and remo kire (thought-shape: a fixed view) are stable parts of Phi.
3. A transparent composition. pheralu philo makes a rain-day without requiring a separate word for every kind of day. A composition that develops a stable shared meaning may belong in the registry.

After checking those places, compare composition with coinage instead of treating either as a last resort. A transmutation may also reframe the source, and its gap log records that choice. A new root follows the Word Creation Protocol and is settled before the passage is finished rather than improvised inside a sentence.

Step03 Restructure

Phi's shape is not English's shape. As you rebuild:

• Break a source sentence when separate Phi clauses make its relations clearer. Complex clauses remain available when the source needs them. Phi uses periods rather than commas between sentences.
• Keep modifier before modified. Prepositional material and objects precede the predicate, while complete dependent clauses precede the clauses they affect. Complementizer openers keep their closers.
• Use the grammar's own instruments. The optative su carries wishes and blessings. Evidentials can mark where knowledge comes from. Headless relatives beginning with whu can name a category without supplying a separate head noun.

Step04 Check the philosophy

Read the draft against the Five Pillars. Ask whether a number clarifies the source or merely ranks, whether an accusation names needed responsibility or turns disagreement into combat, and whether a borrowed hierarchy belongs to the source. Grammar will not answer those questions. It only keeps the available choices audible.

Where the language resists the original, pause. An exact unit may need its source record, and an absent actor may need to remain visibly absent rather than being invented. Resistance is information, not permission to erase content. A transmutation may omit a detail when its source and the reason remain visible; a close translation must keep working until the relevant distinction has a place.

Step05 Validate

Every Phi word in your text must exist in the lexicon with the meaning you are using. Check the words you are least sure of with the lexicon tools, and if the text will live in the repository, run the validator:

python3 scripts/validate_examples.py

The Metta Sutta translation contains no unknown forms. A transmutation has the same obligation: every Phi word in it must exist. Otherwise the passage is a wish for vocabulary, not a finished text.

06 The five moves

Inside steps 2 through 4, the same five moves recur: the repertoire the shelf's texts were built with. The Tao Te Ching text (texts/tao_te_ching.md) names them inline as a worked guide; here is the repertoire itself, each move with the shelf's clearest demonstrations.

The refusal

When Phi cannot rebuild a line directly, ask what the line's virtue or mechanism looks like in Phi's own economy. Contend became takes-nothing and leader became the one-who-guides (Tao Te Ching); master became the separate acts of coercion and exploitation (Schleicher's fable); the Ring Verse's refusal became its text. If the source wording itself matters, preserve it outside the Phi passage rather than presenting transmutation as quotation.

The reframe

Replace the source's imagery with imagery Phi already owns, at the same depth. The archer, bow, and arrows became the wind, the tree, and living seeds (The Prophet); the felled tree became the tree in the great wind (Tao Te Ching); the scattering of Babel became a sowing (the Babel text).

The lexical distinction

When several Phi words meet one English word, their descriptions and usage notes decide. The Tao is keiro, not ruela, because the first is a guiding way and the second is ground or a route that can be travelled. Calm, peaceful, and tranquil likewise keep separate ranges.

The grammar-led choice

Let a ruling shape the sentence, and trust the push. Belong must go through phelu (The Prophet: the possession ruling made the verse truer); Real turned out to be the habitual ro (The Velveteen Rabbit); useful became the possibility particle po (Tao Te Ching: emptiness opens rather than adds).

Composition

Build a thought from ordinary grammar when its parts deserve to remain visible. Quality nouns can name softness and hardness, event nouns can name living and dying, and mu thena gives the Tao Te Ching a count of zero things. A direct word such as whemura (dream) remains preferable when the text means that established concept rather than a newly made image.

Coinage is one of the tools, not a penalty for exhausting the others. When a concept deserves its own root, leave the draft, follow the Word Creation Protocol, and return with a valid word. A shelf text may reach the end without a coin; that is evidence that composition did the work, not a target every text must meet.

07 A working sequence

Read the source until you can name what your rendering promises to preserve. Search the lexicon and registry, compare composition with coinage, then rebuild in Phi's order. The gap log records every deliberate loss. Validation catches forms and structures; the source still has to catch you when the sentence says less, more, or something else.