By Anonymous ![[fr]](/mwf/flags/fr.png "France")
Date 2016-04-13 00:31
Do you plan to realize translations of this wonderful game? I suppose I won't be the only one to offer you to translate the game (I speak french and english, and know a bit of german; I can translate the game in french), then if you agree, you could maybe install a localization group, and give to anyone interested to help develop this great game an address to contact or a process to follow to be able to include the group...
If however this question has already been treated, please excuse me, I know your game since Mageia Linux included it in the distribution's packages but it's my first attempt to post in the forum.
M. de Morangies <magali.demorangies@gmail.com>
If however this question has already been treated, please excuse me, I know your game since Mageia Linux included it in the distribution's packages but it's my first attempt to post in the forum.
M. de Morangies <magali.demorangies@gmail.com>
![[de]](/mwf/flags/de.png "Germany")
It is possible for you to translate the game and if you are interested, we can certainly provide you with all necessary data (if you cannot get it yourself by e.g. cloning the repository). We would of course include your translation or put a download link somewhere.Two things to consider:
- Translation will take time. There is a lot of text to translate. Do not underestimate this. ;)
- The translation will be obsolete once a new release comes out. Usually, there are a lot of changes in newer versions of the game and if no one maintain the translation, a french person will end up with a mix of English and French.
One can always start with the engine strings, as these are more stable. The strings to be translated are found here: https://git.openclonk.org/openclonk.git/blob/HEAD:/planet/System.ocg/LanguageUS.txt
>- The translation will be obsolete once a new release comes out
Maybe it would be a good start to translate the dialogues in missions? I doubt that e.g. the introductory dialogue in gold rush will change significantly in the next two releases.
In addition, that would probably one of the places where a translation would aid players, who do not speak english well, the most.
Also, we should really get the translation-package system up again. I doubt anyone tested that since 2009.
We could make a sticky in the forum where users can upload their self translated Language.ocg's.
I think the reason why we do not have any relations yet is because we keep telling those who are interested in doing it "[it is easily possible] but it is a lot of work! And it might be obsolete later". Why do we say this? Because we assume that1. one person would do that alone...because
a) there is some introduction necessary where to find the translation files etc.
b) granting repo access to anyone wanting to contribute a few strings is not feasible
c) and also nobody wants to go through the hassle of setting up git etc. just to add a few translations
2. it is hard or impossible to keep track of which translations became obsolete after one release
This issue might be solved if we could stick the translation into a tool that eases crowdsourced localization. I know that the iD editor for openstreetmap does this successfully with Transifex but I am sure there are many alternatives to that out there, perhaps even something that I could simply install on openclonk.org.
Let the thread starting at this post be about finding such a software which covers our needs. I have to say in advance that I currently do not have much time (for openclonk), so if anyone knows some tools, has some experience with it or would like to go on this scouting mission himself, I would be very happy about it. Since our loca files are not too complex, finding a proper tool shouldn't be too
That's similar to how translations worked before OpenClonk: the translator would just provide one single file (instead of touching all the files in the repository) and the engine would load that. This functionality is most likely still there. We just never tested it.
![[us]](/mwf/flags/us.png "United States")
What I always disliked about the translations is that there are a ton of duplicates because every object keeps its own string table.I think Isilkor and/or Guenther suggested before to switch to gettext and just work on a global table for system engine and an extra table for each object pack, which falls back to the global table. That should also be easier to translate.
Plus we can use a crowd-translation tool online ( https://www.google.com/?client=ubuntu#channel=fs&q=gettext+crowd+translation )
That sounds wise - but has anyone ever worked with that system and can assess how much work it would be to get it running?
Wasn't the translation of our developer documentation using gettext? At least it was using .po files.gettext is pretty standard and should run out of the box with extra libraries. I wouldn't be too surprised if some of our dependencies already used gettext. The hard part would be (automatic) conversion of the source code to the new system.
The problem with gettext is that you can't load message catalogs from memory.
What about only moving Title.txt and Descxx.txt into StringTblxx.txt? Then there is at least no other language related file in a scenario and object.
Then we'd have to support multi-line strings in the string table though.
Oh true and it would be problematic to use "=" in the desc then...
Btw, if we switch to gettext we could just have the file contents run through gettext. Then there would just be Title.txt and Desc.txt with English versions and translations in .po format.
Do we then need to adjust the translation files if someone e.g. fixes a typo in the English description?
fuzzy translations aren't used, the old translation is just kept to make updating easier.
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