GunChleoc
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Posts posted by GunChleoc
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I have sent myself there forthwith and have requested that Scottish Gaelic will be added to the language list
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Thanks for this! I think if would be good if we had some official information on the homepage as soon as appropriate, to attract translators. *heads over to Transifex to play*
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I'm glad you found this useful.
Gallaecio, thanks for the info and good luck with the implementation
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Hi all,
Sorry for barging in a bit late on this discussion, I did not see this until now.
First a few words about where I'm coming from: I have been working as a localizer for 2 years now both professionally for proprietary software and as a hobby for Opoen Source, and I can't wait to get started translating this game into Scottish Gaelic
If I may make an observation from past experience and hair-pulling: Whatever you do internally, I strongly recommend presenting translators with PO files. This is why:
Access to translation memories and easy cooperation
PO files allow you to use translation memories and put them up on sites like transifex (yes, Transifex allows you to download and reupload the files for offline editing, just like Launchpad).
Plural handling
Gettext implements proper plural handling. How do you intend to implement plural handling? Just to give you an example for why it's needed - if I would use Gaelic grammar on an English example, I would get:
0 fighter1 fhighter2 fhighter3 - 10 fighters11 fhighter12 fhighter13-19 fighters40 ... fighteras opposed to English
0 fighters1 fighter2 ... fightersSpellcheckers
Also, PO files can be used with tools that support hunspell, like Firefox or Virtaal. Personally, I will be translating into a minority language and will be grateful not to have to copy/paste everything into LibreOffice in order to gain access to a spellchecker.
Easy reference to the English source text
Seeing the source and translation string side by side greatly speeds up the process. There are only 2 people active in the Open Source community who are qualified to localize into my language. So, I will have to translate the complete game on my own and saving time will be essential.
With some translation projects, I found it helpful that I could easily see which line in the source the string had come from. Also, as has already been mentioned, programmers can add comments that will be picked up by gettext.
Instant testing of your translation in-game
There is one problem with the text2po conversion approach: How does the average translator who does not run a Linux machine test their translations in-game? If you'd just use gettext, easy-peasy, save as MO and drop your translation into LC_MESSAGES and Bob's your uncle.
Some notes concerning programming issues
If you're worried about strings being spread out to much e.g. for a campaign, that would depend on the design of your campaign config files if they are spread out or not? Maybe you could chat to the devs at Wesnoth who have a very workable solution also for mods, using multiple gettext domains If you're using XML, check out Intltool.
4) Simplification: In this case the dictionary .txt files a very simple, so it's difficult to make any errors. At any rate, C-style format strings should not be used inside translation strings - that's just bad design.If you mean strings like "foo %s bar", they actually are the easiest way to adjust the word order in the target language, if a placeholder can't be avoided.
If you absolutely have to have your own format, talk to the OpenTTD people. They have a working format that does plural, gender and case handling, and they have a web translator as well.
Please let the user select their language in the GUI
And one final request, please do implement a language option in the menu. Detect Locale is fine for language pre-selection only, trust me on this.
Thanks for listening to my long ramble
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I'd be happy to add this game to my localisation queue for Scottish Gaelic once it has reached the stage that it can be translated.
As a translation system, I warmly recomment gettext po files. This will make your localisers happy!
Online platforms are also a good idea to keep the efforts coordinated, you might even be able to automatise adding online translations into nightly builds. I know that SuperTuxKart do that. Some also automatically inform the translators when changes have been made to the source language file.
Here's the platforms I'm familiar with:
Audio Design 5 - Voice List
in Game Development & Technical Discussion
Posted
I could get old Irish and probably Basque through my contacts. I noticed we have Britons, Gauls and Celts. We could use ancient Welsh for the Britons, Old Irish for the Celts and maybe Breton for the Gauls? Breton is not the Celtic language that was originally spoken in France, but we don't have enough written records to reconstruct the language.