Translators wanted for help localising Oolite

[dajt]

Hi,

I'm playing around with Oolite's text drawing routines in an effort to be able to localise at least the main UI pages (intros, status, system info, star charts, markets, etc).

I need help translating the UI's strings because I can only speak English.

If you'd like to see Oolite in your preferred language, I'd like you to help out by translating some of the prompts on the UI pages (ie the strings on the left of the screen), to give me an idea of how much space different languages require.

If you can help me, please e-mail the results to dtaylor (at) gnutls (dot) org

I would prefer the results to be attached to the e-mail in a UTF-8 or UTF-16 encoded text file.

Any assistance is much appreciated!

[JensAyton]

I can cover Swedish, but I’m not home right now.

For a quick sample, here’s a translation of this screen shot:

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Data för Lave

Ekonomi:                Rikt jordbrukssamhälle
Regering:               Diktatur
Tek. nivå:              8
Befolkning:             2.5 miljarder
                        (mänskliga kolonister och Lavier)
Bruttoproduktivitet:    7000 milj Kr
Medelradie:             4116 km

Lave är en rik och berömd värld, möjligen bäst känd för sina stora skogar, det stormiga Pauberionhavet, och den Laviska trädbaggen. Det är också det enda systemet som erbjuder Rymd- och hyperrymdpilotprogrammet.

This raises an issue: the random-text generator may (make that will) not be able to build gramatically valid text for languages other than English. I’ll give it a try for Swedish when I’m home.

[Murgh]

"your preferred language"
no reason Norwegian would be in high demand, but as i see Zwedish is up there I can post a comparison.

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Data om Lave

Økonomi:		Rikt Landbruk
Myndighet:		Diktatur
Teknisk Nivå:		5
Folketall:		2.5 Milliarder
			      (Menneskekolonister)
Brutto Produktivitet:	7000 M Cr.
Gjennomsnittsradius:	4116 km

Lave er mest berømt for sine utbredte regnskoger og den Laveiske trelarven.

or the Lave.oxp text

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Lave er en rik og berømt verden, kanskje mest kjent for sine utbredte regnskoger, det stormfulle Paluberionhavet, og den Laveiske trelarven. Det er også det eneste systemet hvor man kan ta Rom-og-stjernefartspiloteksamen. 

I mailed along a txt

[JensAyton]

“Preferred language,” there’s a point. My preferred language is English, so I can’t translate it. I notice Lave becomes lower-tech in Norwegian, but that’s just to be expected. :-p

Also, a thing to consider is how to arrange stuff. Under OS X, the standard arrangement is:

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Oolite.app
  Contents
    Resources
      [Language-neutral stuff]
      English.lproj
        [Stuff in English]
      Swedish.lproj
        [Stuff in Swedish]

When asking for a file, if it isn’t found in Resources, it will be looked for in the appropriate language folder (“appropriate” being the one that appears highest on the user’s list of language choices). This is probably theoretically the case in GNUStep, but a) there may be AppKit dependencies – I don’t know straight off whether NSBundle is AppKit or Foundation – and b) I don’t know how well the choice would be made under various OSes.

Then again, it may be better to have language user-selectable, and possibly distribute “language packs” as OXPs or a variant thereof, with the system setting merely being used to determine the default.

Oh, another minor problem with my translation above: Credits translates as Krediter. The logical abbreviation is Kr. Unfortunately, the Swedish currency is Kronor… abbreviated Kr. Cr doesn’t make much sense, though. I believe the same applies to Low-techian. :-)

[Murgh]

“Preferred language,” there’s a point. My preferred language is English, so I can’t translate it. I notice Lave becomes lower-tech in Norwegian, but that’s just to be expected. :-p

I do feel responsible, having upped the TL a bit in Lave.oxp according to how I interpreted Dark Wheel..

and here I was setting myself up for low-tech insults at my country

we're high-tech enough to use Credits though!

[dajt]

Murgh sent me some strings, I pulled my hair out for 4 days, and we have screenshots!

Localising Oolite - the status page partially translated to Norwegian

Localising Oolite - the system data page translated to Norwegian

Localising Oolite - the market page mostly translated to Norwegian

EDIT: Murgh has gone and done the whole descriptions.plist file (thanks!), and I've used his strings for equipment and commodities. See the revised system data screenshot and the new market screenshots above.

There is a very long list of things to be sorted out with localising Oolite, but it is nice to see some progress.

If anyone can spend some time translating to a different language, e-mail me at the address at the top of this thread and I'll send you the descriptions.plist file which has some of the UI strings (the one that comes with Windows installers is a bit behind this localisation work).

[dajt]

Hi,

I have created a Windows installer from the i18n branch to allow people to experiment with the UI.

The readme file included with the installer has details on how to set the fonts and which files you can edit to put Oolite into your preferred language.

The preset font is Arial Bold which gives pretty good results and looks very similar to Oolite's built-in font.

Also included are Murgh's Norwegian plist translations as an example of how to go about it.

Get OoliteUnicodeInstall-r445.exe from Oolite-PC.

I can't see any reason this won't work for Linux people too, as long as you compile it from the svn i18n branch and find a TTF font to use.

[JensAyton]

Hmm, I thought the “built-in” font was Helvetica regular, which is what Arial is a copy of. There’s probably at least one free clone with the same basic shapes and identical metrics, because it’s one of the standard PostScript fonts.

For good i18n, though, you don’t really want to stick to one font. You want a list of fonts; if a given character has no representation in one font, look in the next.

[dajt]

Windows doesn't have Helvetica. I found a free set of fonts on a GNU site which includes a Helvetica/Arial copy. I tried it and it seems to work okay, but doesn't look anywhere near as good as the MS font.

I hadn't thought about font substitution because Windows handles that for you when using it's API. Of course, I'm not using it's API now.

I'm not going to worry about it unless someone has a problem. I'm guessing Oolite will only be showing one language at a time and users will be able to find a font that includes all the characters they need.

Additionally, this topic isn't generating a lot of interest so it seems most people are happy to play Oolite in English. It is looking like too much work to get all this going if no-one actually wants it.

[Murgh]

isn't the time ripe soon for an excusive OoliteFont?

[Rxke]

Additionally, this topic isn't generating a lot of interest so it seems most people are happy to play Oolite in English. It is looking like too much work to get all this going if no-one actually wants it.

I'd not discard it too quickly. I'm sure people would love a native version

I personally couldn't care less, I 'mind-switch' to English instantaneously, so it barely registers I'm playing Oolite non-native...

But I'd bet there are people who'd love it translated in a variety of languages...

[Odo987]

But I'd bet there are people who'd love it translated in a variety of languages...

buy' ngop. Cha Oolite Toh'gah-nah lo Pre'tOk. ghIj ghet jaghmeyjaj.

[dajt]

I'm sure there is a Klingon TTF font... that might look cool :)

[Wolfwood]

I, for one, cannot even understand the need to translate games to native languages. Perhaps I'm too old, but in my day, _all_ the games were in English. It would feel weird seeing Finnish used in Oolite...

[winston]

Judging by some web stats for Oolite-Linux downloads, Oolite (and Elite-like games in general, see the Russian version for the Speccy) are quite popular in Russia. I reckon a Russian translation would probably be a good one. Now we have at least a couple of Russkies on the board who I'm sure can lend a bit of a helping hand with that!