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Involve the community: Localizing


SirJohn85

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First of all, I am aware that somewhere exists a thread for translation. I suggest a different direction, that not the developers but the community should translate.

 

Dual Universe has a massive, big advantage: it does not have quest text.

We have something in this forum which is very valuable: Multilingual People.

It is a long way to the release and we have a lot of time.

 

So why not work with your community?

 

The system is not even a new one. The system has already taken advantage of another game. Long talk, short sense. Look at how another developer makes it.

 


 

 

The language is provided when it reaches 100%. And the community can correct and coordinate together what is useful.

The only requirement: NovaQuark has to provide the texts to us.

 

More infos from the other devs: http://www.spaceengineersgame.com/localization.html

 

 

Edit: Sorry, I've forgot you need a (free) account. Here's an overview of the site (my account): http://imgur.com/a/oszB3

Edited by SirJohn85
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Let's take the page above as an example.

 

This platform is used by the other developer to provide his English text in other languages. If the developer publishes texts, they can be viewed by the community. One proposes a translation for words such as iron, thruster, etc and sentences. The community can vote if a translation already exists or write something, if nothing exists.

 

Edit: Sorry, I've forgot you need a (free) account. Here's an overview of the site (my account): http://imgur.com/a/oszB3

Edited by SirJohn85
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I fully support this idea as it lets the game reach more people and doesn't cost the developers much money or time. I remember reading about how the Russian community and EVE were angry because the localization was poorly done. They wrote an excellent open letter petitioning for this same thing, which can be found here. I didn't create this or have any part in it, so I take no credit for it, but would like to share a few excerpts:

 

First, a summary of how professional localization can fail to meet the needs of the playerbase.

 

EVE Online is a sci-fi computer game about life of immortal capsuleers in the distant future. But the localization staff seems to be unable to understand it. So, they work based on authenticity rule, i.e. only terms from real world industry or warfare are used. The result resembles a product of a neural network trained on fifty-years-old technical literature, its linguistic structures are disturbingly unnatural. Overspecialized industry terms are used on a par with military acronyms without any explanation or any regard to players having to pronounce or just remember them. As the result, monstrous terms like "Ракеты дальнего боя сверхбольшой мощности c высокоточными ГСН"/"Very high yield long-range combat missiles with high-precision HH" emerge.  Originally this string was "High-precision XL Cruise missiles"; and the acronym ГСН (головка самонаведения)/HH (homing head) is never even expanded in game client.

Russian language is long. But not this long. And EVE Online as a game definitely does not need any further complication. Simple and short versions of  translated terms should be preferred.

 

 

Secondly, and example of the community working to select the appropriate translations.

 

A vivid example would be the recent events on eve-ru.com forum, the largest (according to CCP) Russian-speaking EVE Online portal. A player has created a thread about the translation of "heavy assault missiles" term. The readers were offered to take part in a poll to express their opinion regarding the best possible translation. The poll options were as follows:


‒ "Облегченные ракеты большой мощности"/"Lightweight high-yield missiles", present in client before the August patch ‒ 1 vote;

‒ "Малогабаритные ракеты большой мощности"/"Small-scale high-yield missiles", present in client after the August patch ‒ 0 votes;

‒ "Тяжёлые тактические ракеты"/"Heavy tactical missiles", linguistically correct, but barely conveying the meaning and poorly susceptible to reverse translation ‒ 4 votes;

"Тяжёлые штурмовые ракеты"/"Heavy assault missiles", linguistically correct, literal and fully conveying the meaning 241 votes!

 
I highly recommend reading the whole thing.
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I always enforced using the english eve client because even german one was....crap. Those Russians were totally right to do this.

 

Though I truly believe that most will play in english because of convenience (certain metagame, tactics, strategies will use words from DU and those WILL be english).

 

Nonetheless if it's community driven, cheap and easy to do: go for it. Give the community something to and get them involved

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I am talking exclusively about the user interface and everything about texts. No more, no less. In the game, the players will develop their jargon, it will not change.

 

This could be cool to test out and try and expand the communities knowledge. What is nice about this is that it brings the community into it instead of just having the devs do everything, could also help fix translation issues.

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I am talking exclusively about the user interface and everything about texts. No more, no less. In the game, the players will develop their jargon, it will not change.

Yes I know. It's kinda hard to talk about those HML when you first have to translate that abbreviation to english and then to german and them search through the market to find it....That's why I always enforced using the english client
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Yes I know. It's kinda hard to talk about those HML when you first have to translate that abbreviation to english and then to german and them search through the market to find it....That's why I always enforced using the english client

 

 

The answer is multilingual search. Preferably, of course, in XML so you just change the text, nothing more to the programming. 
 
A simple extension of the code. I type Iron - I get Iron. I type Eisen - I get Iron.
 
Or you can organize a kind of localization index from the beginning. Thus you can expand an infinite number of languages with minimal effort. It changes only the text, but not the localization ID.
 
 
 
NOT RECOMMENDED: Here is an example of how it would be cumbersome - but hopefully understandable what is going on.
-- Automatically adding localized strings once the LocalizationManager has loaded
Hooks:Add("LocalizationManagerPostInit", "LocalizationManagerPostInit_LocExample", function(loc)

    loc:add_localized_strings( {
        ["loc_ore_iron"] = "Iron", "Eisen", ...
        ["loc_ore_copper"] = "Copper", "Kupfer", ...
    } )

   -- Player is typing iron, no matter which language
   if SearchTheMarketResult == ["loc_ore_iron"] then
   -- do the code
   end


end
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  • 8 months later...

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