Do you have all of the build dependencies? For the Arch kernel26 package, 'xmlto' and 'docbook-xsl' are build dependencies. The template thing seems to match up with those xml/xsl packages... Here's the Arch PKGBUILD:
http://repos.archlinux.org/wsvn/pack...86_64/PKGBUILD
It's pretty easy to follow. You can more or less emulate what it does on your own if you need to =)
I think the gist of your problem is that you probably don't want to run make on it's own. You should be more specific. Take a look at how Arch builds specific parts of the kernel separately (kernel image, modules, **documentation**, headers, ...)
PS - If you're building the kernel for yourself, you might at least want to set the processor type. (In the kernel config and CFLAGS)
