Translate Book (Parallel Subagents)

Skill by ara.so — Daily 2026 Skills collection.

A Claude Code skill that translates entire books (PDF/DOCX/EPUB) into any language using parallel subagents. Each chunk gets an isolated context window — preventing truncation and context accumulation that plague single-session translation.

Pipeline Overview

Input (PDF/DOCX/EPUB)
  │
  ▼
Calibre ebook-convert → HTMLZ → HTML → Markdown
  │
  ▼
Split into chunks (~6000 chars each)
  │  manifest.json tracks SHA-256 hashes
  ▼
Parallel subagents (8 concurrent by default)
  │  each: read chunk → translate → write output_chunk*.md
  ▼
Validate (manifest hash check, 1:1 source↔output match)
  │
  ▼
Merge → Pandoc → HTML (with TOC) → Calibre → DOCX / EPUB / PDF

Prerequisites

# 1. Calibre (provides ebook-convert)
# macOS
brew install --cask calibre
# Linux
sudo apt-get install calibre
# Or download from https://calibre-ebook.com/

# 2. Pandoc
brew install pandoc        # macOS
sudo apt-get install pandoc # Linux

# 3. Python dependencies
pip install pypandoc beautifulsoup4

Verify all tools are available:

ebook-convert --version
pandoc --version
python3 -c "import pypandoc; print('pypandoc ok')"

Installation

Option A: npx (recommended)

npx skills add deusyu/translate-book -a claude-code -g

Option B: ClawHub

clawhub install translate-book

Option C: Git clone

git clone https://github.com/deusyu/translate-book.git ~/.claude/skills/translate-book

Usage in Claude Code

Once the skill is installed, use natural language inside Claude Code:

translate /path/to/book.pdf to Chinese

translate ~/Downloads/mybook.epub to Japanese

/translate-book translate /path/to/book.docx to French

The skill orchestrates the full pipeline automatically.

Supported Languages

Language codes are extensible — add new ones in the skill definition.

Running Pipeline Steps Manually

Step 1: Convert to Markdown Chunks

python3 scripts/convert.py /path/to/book.pdf --olang zh

This produces inside {book_name}_temp/:

• chunk0001.md, chunk0002.md, ... (source chunks, ~6000 chars each)
• manifest.json (SHA-256 hashes for validation)

# For EPUB input
python3 scripts/convert.py /path/to/book.epub --olang ja

# For DOCX input
python3 scripts/convert.py /path/to/book.docx --olang fr

Step 2: Translate (Parallel Subagents)

The skill handles this step — it launches 8 concurrent subagents per batch, each translating one chunk independently:

# Each subagent receives exactly this task:
Read chunk0042.md → translate to target language → write output_chunk0042.md