Translating Oolite (and the OXZs)

[Olibrius]

Hello everyone, I joined this forum because I'm interested in translating Oolite in French.

Please note that the language I want to translate it to is (almost) irrelevant in this topic because I'm looking for clarifications on the process itself, not on peculiarities regarding the French language (although there are plenty but these would do for another topic!)

If I'm not mistaken, there is very little on this BBS regarding translation (and almost nothing recent), so I wonder whether it is still something to be considered or not?

What I wish to discuss here :

1. Strict Mode not possible with translated version?
2. Translations resulting in too many files in expansion list
3. Text strings in .js
4. Fixed-sized text boxes and coordinates
5 ...?



1. I already started translating the core game in an OXP, it all goes well except that when I wanted to launch the game in strict mode, well, the translation was lost since the OX[PZ]s are not loaded in that mode... So, I can translate the core game but I can not play the core game in that language, only in English. Of course, I can replace the .plist in the install folder, but this requires sudo access (I'm under linux) and I feel that it kind of defeats the purpose. Ideally, isn't the player supposed to simply download a translation expansion pack and be able to play in that language, including in strict mode? Maybe I'm doing something wrong here?


2. Let's suppose now that because of the huge success of Oolite across the 8 known galaxies, translations become popular and let's say that 50 of them are developed for the core game alone (including Klingon, Dalek,...). Would it be wise to add another 50 entries to the already 500+ long OXZ list ? And let's suppose now that those expansions are also translated into those 50 languages: that would mean a whopping 500 x 50 = 25 000 new files in the list. That is way too much. Of course, one can argue that there will never be 50 different languages for Oolite (after all, Daleks might eventually exterminate us all), but I'm discussing the principle here.

I suggest that the translations should be incorporated into the OXZs themselves (and in the core, of course), grouped into their own folder, next to Config/, Images/, Textures/ etc. Maybe Locales/, as does linux? And then, one subdir per language (en, fr, it, de, nl, jp, ...)

Each OXZ would then have its own Locales/ subdir regrouping its own set of translations, and the expansion packs list would be kept consistent at 500+ entries, growing only with new OXZs, not new translations.

Since the OXZs are zipped containers, let's fill the containers, not the directory!


3. I noticed that there are still hard-coded English strings in the .js, certainly in the OXPs, maybe not in the core, I don't remember. I suggest everything be moved to .plist files. I can try to re-program this myself of course, but (a) all modifs to the .js will be lost with the next upgrade of the OXZ and (b) not all translators will know how to do this.


4. Fixed-size boxes and coordinates can be a problem for "longer" languages (typically, French). Ideally, text length should be calculated on the fly and the insertion point derived from it.


5. These are my concerns so far regarding the translation process, maybe I'll come up later with more problems, but that is what I noticed so far.

Sorry, very long message for a first one, I'll stop here.
The point of all this is, should I go on with my translation and the actual system, or should I wait for structural changes? What is the situation?

Thank you for your attention.
Olibrius

[another_commander]

Hi and welcome Olibrius.

All valid points and they have been expressed by other users in the past too. I don't think that we have any literal strings inside .js files in core; all translatable strings in the core should be sitting in descriptions.plist, planetinfo.plist and missiontext.plist. We cannot really control each OXP to see what they do.

I would not wait for any structural changes at this time. The team is very small and these kind of changes require time that we don't normally have and would most likely break (temporarily hopefully) a stable enough game, possibly also many existing OXPs. If you want to do a translation, your best bet for now is to make it an OXP and that's it. You can change the core game this way (minus Strict Mode as you have noted, since Strict Mode is the standard game with no OXPs) but OXPs will still be showing messages in the language they are written in.

[Olibrius]

Thank you for replying, another_commander, I will do as you suggest and continue translating as I did so far.

Sorry for having repeated what other users have already expressed in the past, but although I found topics on French, Russian and Italian translations, they were so old (~2009) that I doubted the content was still valid.

[Cody]

Welcome aboard, Commander!

[Olibrius]

Thank you !
My biggest concern so far: how on earth am I going to translate 'Trumble' in French?!

[Diziet Sma]

My biggest concern so far: how on earth am I going to translate 'Trumble' in French?!

See if you can get locate a copy of "The Trouble with Tribbles" in French, and base it off that?

In other news, it appears that 'Tribble' may actually be a valid surname, at least in French Canada. A number of citations around the net mention a Dr. Denise St-Cyr Tribble, and there are references to other people with the same surname.

Some googling around suggests most French translations just use the word 'tribble'.. so it seems likely you could just go with 'trumble'.


Edit: The current French translation for Oolite uses the word "Groblem", if that's any help.

[Astrobe]

Thank you !
My biggest concern so far: how on earth am I going to translate 'Trumble' in French?!

"Tribule"

I think "Tribble" may be a pun for "tribulation", which exist both in French and English.

[Olibrius]

Diziet Sma and Astrobe, thank you for your suggestions and the links, I'll have a look at them.

[Poovga]

Hello Olibrius,

I translated a couple of previous versions. I'm glad someone decided to go on.

Feel free to ask any question.

For "Trumble", I used "Groblem" which is as close to "problème" as "Trumble"' is close to "Trouble".

As a guideline, I always used masculine nouns : it's easier to translate "shrimp" by "homard" even if it's not correct than changing the coding to have the female form of the adjective

By the way, I also cut/pasted the blocks [...] in the sentences to have the adjectives after the nouns. That sounds better in French.

For the rest, have fun with equipment, descriptions and dialogues. Also, in the Missiontext, I tried to have officers talking as officers, workers as workers and so on (funnier to write and play!) You can use some "gros mots" but not too "gros".

À bientôt,

[Day]

Un gros blème !

Bravo