Nescio Posted December 12, 2020 Report Share Posted December 12, 2020 Currently there are 86 project languages listed at https://www.transifex.com/wildfire-games/0ad/ While about a dozen is nearly complete (>95%) and many are progressing nicely (e.g. Latin is at 55%), a number of languages is still at 0%. Some of those seem to be political additions: Arabic (Egypt) Arabic (Iraq) Arabic (Saudi Arabia) Chinese (Singapore) Russian (Ukraine) Now I'm aware there are dozens of varieties of Arabic; however, there appears to be only one written form of Arabic. As for Chinese, I believe there are basically two writing systems: simplified characters are used in mainland China and Singapore, traditional characters in Macau, Honk Kong, and Taiwan. And while a significant portion of the Ukrainian population speaks Russian, I don't think they write it differently than in Russia. @Gallaecio, @GunChleoc, @Itms, whoever is in charge of 0 A.D. localization on transifex, is it worth keeping these languages? I also have doubts about: French (Canada) Spanish (Argentina) Spanish (Chile) Spanich (Colombia) —requested— Spanish (Mexico) Again, what should matter is orthography (how it's written), lexicon (vocabulary), and grammar; I'm unsure how great the differences actually are. (To be clear, I'm certainly not opposed to maintaining different versions of languages; English in the USA is written differently than in the UK, and Portuguese in Brazil is not the same as in Europe and Africa; or Croatian/Serbian and Hindi/Urdu.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loki1950 Posted December 12, 2020 Report Share Posted December 12, 2020 French Canadian is different than Continental French it retains several features of 17 th century French though most of those features are of interest mainly to academia there are a few that are very problematic for clear communication it usually takes native French speakers from France six months to acclimate to Quebecois idioms. The official political policy is to prefer Continental French most of the political class in Quebec are embarrassed by Quebecois and just wish it would go away. Enjoy the Choice Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nescio Posted December 12, 2020 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2020 44 minutes ago, Loki1950 said: French Canadian is different than Continental French it retains several features of 17 th century French though most of those features are of interest mainly to academia there are a few that are very problematic for clear communication it usually takes native French speakers from France six months to acclimate to Quebecois idioms. The official political policy is to prefer Continental French most of the political class in Quebec are embarrassed by Quebecois and just wish it would go away. To be clear, I'm not saying there are no differences: no doubt native speakers can easily hear where someone is from, and people from different parts of the world may have trouble understanding each other. However, are the differences limited to the vernacular, or do they extend into the written language as well? (I don't know, I don't live in Quebec.) For the purposes of localization, the vernacular is irrelevant, only the written language matters. So the question is, would a translation of 0 A.D. into Canadian French look actually any different from one into standard French? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trinketos Posted December 12, 2020 Report Share Posted December 12, 2020 We could put only two versions of Spanish One for the peninsula and another for Latin America, to make things easier for us I think Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stan` Posted December 13, 2020 Report Share Posted December 13, 2020 6 hours ago, Nescio said: For the purposes of localization, the vernacular is irrelevant, only the written language matters. So the question is, would a translation of 0 A.D. into Canadian French look actually any different from one into standard French? From my experience they tend to avoid English words where possible, e.g. they're translating moving titles and things like KFC (the restaurant) to be in french, so it's possible that common anglicism we use in French French might not be present there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loki1950 Posted December 13, 2020 Report Share Posted December 13, 2020 1 hour ago, Stan` said: From my experience they tend to avoid English words where possible, e.g. they're translating moving titles and things like KFC (the restaurant) to be in french, so it's possible that common anglicism we use in French French might not be present there. That is because of "LAW 101" only french is allowed on signage but most Quebecois actually ignore that in common speech while Acadian french from New Brunswick will mix english and french in the same breath. Enjoy the Choice 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GunChleoc Posted December 13, 2020 Report Share Posted December 13, 2020 (edited) I'd say make a list of the 0% projects and if they are still at 0% after the next release is done, clean house. I think it's OK if people want to translate into their vernacular - those Arabic variants seem to be different enough from each other. I don't know that much about the language, but we can expect them to be more different from each other than Norwegian/Swedish/Danish are from each other. If you get requests for new language variants, ask the translator if they want to contribute to an active variant and only create the new language if they are sure that they want a separate project. Edited December 13, 2020 by GunChleoc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nescio Posted December 13, 2020 Author Report Share Posted December 13, 2020 10 hours ago, Trinketos said: We could put only two versions of Spanish One for the peninsula and another for Latin America, to make things easier for us I think It's not about the amount of work, but whether it is meaningful. So if written Spanish in Argentine or Chile is really different from written Spanish in Spain, then yes, continue maintaining them, and add variants for Bolivia, Peru, etc. as well. But if in practice all such translations would be the same, then what's the point of having them? 8 hours ago, Loki1950 said: That is because of "LAW 101" only french is allowed on signage but most Quebecois actually ignore that in common speech while Acadian french from New Brunswick will mix english and french in the same breath. Again, common speech is irrelevant in this case, what matters for translations of 0 A.D. is the written language. 1 hour ago, GunChleoc said: I'd say make a list of the 0% projects and if they are still at 0% after the next release is done, clean house. The first part is easy: Spoiler As for the second part, looking at https://github.com/0ad/0ad/tree/eb2fc5c53d0c55de308be6dc5bb7f952cfbc210d/binaries/data/mods/public/l10n , it seems ar_EG, ar_SA, kn, ku, si, and sw were already present in A23, which was released over two years ago. (And fr_CA was added at least four years ago, and is now only at 2.2%.) That said, I think it's fine to keep e.g. Mongolian, Swahili, Urdu, despite them being at 0% and currently having no translators, because they do have written forms clearly different from other available languages. However, I very much doubt that's true for ru_UA or zh_SG. 1 hour ago, GunChleoc said: I think it's OK if people want to translate into their vernacular - those Arabic variants seem to be different enough from each other. I don't know that much about the language, but we can expect them to be more different from each other than Norwegian/Swedish/Danish are from each other. The difference is that the vernacular is the spoken language, not written, whereas Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian all have written forms; and translations of 0 A.D. are very much written text, not spoken audio. To emphasize, I'm not at all opposed to having varieties of a language; I'm merely questioning whether some (written) translations would actually be any different from each other. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GunChleoc Posted December 13, 2020 Report Share Posted December 13, 2020 Vernaculars can be written too - the Romance languages are all vernaculars of Latin and they can get written just fine The definition whether a variant is a language or a dialect is never purely linguistic, it is political too. For example, if Norwegians listen to or read Swedish they understand most of it. If I listen to Scots, I understand maybe about half of it. It is still hotly disputed though whether it's a dialect of English or a separate language, and the discussion is very political. From the description on Wikipedia, not all variants of Arabic are mutually intelligible, including Modern Standard Arabic, so people should not be summarily blocked from translating such a variant if they are willing to put in the work. The decision really needs to be up to the translators, because they know their languages best. Duplicate projects should be avoided though, which is why on the projects I manage, I always write to the translators that request a new language variant to check if they are comfortable with contributing to the "main" variant instead. I don't manage 0AD though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nescio Posted December 13, 2020 Author Report Share Posted December 13, 2020 Sure, I know all that. Didn't someone write “a language is a dialect with an army and navy”? Differences between American and British English are much smaller, than, say, between Cockney and Scouse. If Arabic written in Egypt is indeed different from the standard form, then yes, having an Egyptian Arabic translation is fine. But there is no point in keeping a 0% translated language variety if no such thing exists. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trinketos Posted December 20, 2020 Report Share Posted December 20, 2020 On 13/12/2020 at 4:44 AM, Nescio said: It's not about the amount of work, but whether it is meaningful. So if written Spanish in Argentine or Chile is really different from written Spanish in Spain, then yes, continue maintaining them, and add variants for Bolivia, Peru, etc. as well. But if in practice all such translations would be the same, then what's the point of having them? Again, common speech is irrelevant in this case, what matters for translations of 0 A.D. is the written language. The first part is easy: Reveal hidden contents oh i see. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrAdam Posted January 13, 2021 Report Share Posted January 13, 2021 You are correct when it comes to Arabic, there is only one written form of it, and it is understood by all Arabic-speaking audiences, so there is no need to have specializations for each country, in fact, the players will expect one Arabic language option to be available, more is just confusing for the players and makes translation way harder since other specializations are not standard Arabic, just local dialect used in day to day life in that country, and it is not expected to be fully understood by other people outside that country, but on the other hand, standard Arabic is used in official matters, and when understood, it is understood the same way by all of the people that know how to read it. So this basically explains the 0% in translation in those. So feel free to drop these and only keep one Arabic language option. Arabic (Egypt) Arabic (Iraq) Arabic (Saudi Arabia) I also took it upon my self to help translate into Arabic a little bit, although i find it hard to translate names of places or people (you'd need someone with a background in ancient history, even googling and matching doesn't yield a correct answer, so it is acceptable to translate those names literally letter by letter. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nescio Posted January 28, 2021 Author Report Share Posted January 28, 2021 (edited) @MrAdam, thank you for the confirmation! By the way, 0 A.D. already had a https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/EnglishStyleGuide for user-facing strings in the public repository, but now translators can also request having a specific page for their language at https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Localization#AdditionalInstructionsforLanguageTeams @Stan`, could you add a page for British English? Perhaps a “Translators” subforum should be added under “Game Development & Technical Discussion”. A quick forum search revealed a number of forum threads: Spoiler 2020-07-02: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/28456-silesian-language/ 2020-06-19: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/28389-standardize-translation-strings/ 2020-02-10: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/27583-translating-specific-names/ 2020-02-03: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/27555-localization-mistakes-ukrainian/ 2019-01-31: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/25323-shouid-i-translate-the-origin-name/ 2018-10-17: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/24980-translation-weird-building-names/ 2018-09-10: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/24829-0-ad-name-translation-for-rtl-languages/ 2018-09-10: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/24831-misc-simulation-translation/ 2018-09-09: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/24823-translation-advise/ 2018-05-18: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/24359-azərbaycan-dilinə-tərcüməazerbaijani-localizationперевод-на-азербайджанский/ 2018-04-05: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/24183-spanish-tech-translate-error/ 2017-11-19: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/23059-localization-of-the-game-0-ad/ 2016-02-24: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/20513-bulgarian-language/ There are many more, I only checked the first pages of search results. (And I didn't even search for “internationalization”, “localization”, or “translation” .) Edited January 28, 2021 by Nescio Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stan` Posted January 28, 2021 Report Share Posted January 28, 2021 2 hours ago, Nescio said: British English Is that en_UK or en_GB? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nescio Posted January 29, 2021 Author Report Share Posted January 29, 2021 14 hours ago, Stan` said: Is that en_UK or en_GB? A good question! They're basically equivalents, but en-GB is more common, and also used by 0 A.D.'s l10n .po files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stan` Posted January 29, 2021 Report Share Posted January 29, 2021 2 minutes ago, Nescio said: A good question! They're basically equivalents, but en-GB is more common, and also used by 0 A.D.'s l10n .po files. I'll go with en_GB then; Do you have a starting text for that page? (I can't create it without any text sadly) (I suppose I could take the other pages as example and feed that into deepL but that seems a bit lame) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nescio Posted January 29, 2021 Author Report Share Posted January 29, 2021 37 minutes ago, Stan` said: I'll go with en_GB then; Do you have a starting text for that page? (I can't create it without any text sadly) (I suppose I could take the other pages as example and feed that into deepL but that seems a bit lame) Just start with “Use British spelling.” or something; I'll expand later. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stan` Posted January 29, 2021 Report Share Posted January 29, 2021 https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Localization/en_GB Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nescio Posted January 29, 2021 Author Report Share Posted January 29, 2021 More of the same: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stan` Posted February 11, 2021 Report Share Posted February 11, 2021 Hey everyone! Translation Freeze will be on Saturday 23:59 UTC. Make sure your language will be included by getting it below the 470 remaining words to translate. So far 17 languages will be included. Greek, Chinese and Italian are almost there.https://www.transifex.com/wildfire-games/0ad/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nescio Posted February 11, 2021 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2021 @Gallaecio, @GunChleoc, @Itms, @Stan`, is it possible to replace the current “Tamil (India) (ta_IN)” localization with just “Tamil (ta)”, keeping the currently translated strings? Tamil is an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore as well, there is no point in having the _IN version. Also, I'm still in favour of deleting: On 12/12/2020 at 1:18 PM, Nescio said: Arabic (Egypt) Arabic (Iraq) Arabic (Saudi Arabia) Chinese (Singapore) Russian (Ukraine) It's a bit annoying people keep requesting duplicates of existing languages: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stan` Posted February 11, 2021 Report Share Posted February 11, 2021 6 minutes ago, Nescio said: is it possible to replace the current “Tamil (India) (ta_IN)” localization with just “Tamil (ta)”, As far as I can see no :/ 6 minutes ago, Nescio said: It's a bit annoying people keep requesting duplicates of existing languages: Indeed, I thought I closed all of them Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nescio Posted February 11, 2021 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2021 2 hours ago, Stan` said: 2 hours ago, Nescio said: @Stan`, is it possible to replace the current “Tamil (India) (ta_IN)” localization with just “Tamil (ta)”, keeping the currently translated strings? As far as I can see no :/ https://docs.transifex.com/projects/adding-and-removing-project-languages#changing-a-target-language Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nescio Posted February 12, 2021 Author Report Share Posted February 12, 2021 (edited) Dear translators, there is only a day and a half left to get these to 100%: (The cut-off is reportedly at 90%.) Edited February 12, 2021 by Nescio Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sarcoma Posted February 12, 2021 Report Share Posted February 12, 2021 @soloooy0: En el árbol de civilizaciones vi que dice 'mujer kushita' en vez de 'cusita' y en la descripción dice kushita un par de veces Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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