Xenonauts languages

[a333]

Xenopedia font is finished now. It contains ASCII (of course), almost all of the Controls and Latin-1 Supplement (advanced punctuation and basic diacritics), all Latin Extended A (advanced diacritics), Greek and Cyrillic sets.

Here's info about diapasones:

http://everything2.com/title/Unicode+European+Alphabets

Xenonauts font upgraded with tilda and basic diacritics. German/French/Spanish/partially Sweden needs should be covered now.

[Schnittertm]

That's not needed. Just set the encoding into UTF-8 in your text editor. Notepad does this in save menu, more advanced editors could switch the encoding on the fly via menu. Then just copypaste this symbol into the string like this:

<Data ss:Type="String">ÄÄÄÄÄ</Data>

I've just checked it, works perfectly.

Thanks for the tip, works like a charm. It will certainly make editing the file easier if I don't have to type the ASCII codes anymore all the time.

[a333]

Fonts are finished.
I didn't manage to make it in time for a beta, probably, so if the Chris wouldn't be mad, i'll put them here for testing purproses.

[Chris]

You did make it just in time for beta, so the Chris is perfectly happy with it

[Chris]

Oh - re: translation, we've had various offers for translations but I've not really committed to any of them yet, barring a Spanish translator that has agreed to work for free for his name on the translated version title screen (so he'll get the first go at translating it to Spanish).

My stance on the translation is that I'd like it to be done, but I don't want to spend much money on it and I don't want it to eat up too much development time.

The stuff I'd be willing to make time for to support translations:

1) Coming up with some generals guidelines for the translations - ie. should the aliens have the same names, or should they have the localised equivalents of their name?

2) Sorting out strings.xml and moving hardcoded text strings to places where they can be edited, and providing the images where text is baked into the background etc.

3) Happy to put translator names on the Main Menu screen of their translated version.

The major problem that I see is simply that I can't read any foreign languages, so I can't verify how good the translation actually is. We'll need some system of community verification I think, so we know the translator is getting the feeling of the game right.

I'm very much open to community translations if people want to do it, but we'll probably need to set up a specific sub-forum for it or something. Also, at this stage I am still chopping and changing the research tree so I'd wait another month or so until it all settles down before you try to translate any of the Xenopedia. Also, strings.xml is a mess at the moment...I'll have to sort that out at some point too.

[crusherven]

I'd keep the alien names for the most part. At least, when we're talking about sebilians and caesans, they're not exactly "real" english words, and plenty of words creep over to different languages in the real world. For example, "le weekend" in French is what you'd think it would be. Computadora and telefono in Spanish aren't exactly brain teasers, either. I'd maybe make an exception for names like "Reaper" that have an actual meaning.

So, in Spanish, I'd call sebilians and caesans "sebilianos" and "caesanos," and reaper maybe "segador" (harvester) or "la parca" (grim reaper). I think you want to make sure the alien names are pronounceable, but still very similar. It also makes sense for the aliens to basically keep the same name, since the whole world--as represented by Xenonauts--is meeting the aliens at the same time.

[nixcalo]

Well, I'd definitely go for translations into promising markets, at least. For example, the Spanish market is HUGE and Spanish speaking people do, in general, suck at foreign languages. So I think that the possibility of launching a game in a market of, say, 400 million people is not something to frown upon. And remember, Chris, most Spanish people will not even look twice at a game that is not in Spanish.... cultural globalization has not reached those levels yet. And I am thankful for that, since I am a translator and I eat and pay my bills with translations.

So Chris, I don't really know why you are unwilling to spend money on something that would most definitely be profitable. A community-based translation might do for hardcore gamers, but it won't appeal to the public in general nor will let you launch a game properly via standard or non-standard channels (magazines, mouth to mouth, free demos, etc.). In this, quality is important. I am tired of seeing how many AAA titles undersell in Spain because people complain of the awful translation, and that is because some bloke didn't think it appropiate to spend a few bucks in a decent translation. Remember, in Spain the average proficiency in English is somewhat less tan a 5 year-old kid. And if you go to Venezuela, Bolivia or Uruguay, it's even less. And it's millions and millions of potential gamers... And remember, an awful translation is usually considered a lack of respect for the country, it's akin to shouting out loud "I don't give a damn about you guys, I don't trust you to be worth the effort". For that, no translation at all is better than a bad translation. It won't anger the people.. simply the game will not sell at all in those countries.

It's your choice, though. I definitely think the costs vs. potential rewards are straightforward. Just think of the sales of Ufo EU in Spain if it had not been translated or had been community-translated. It would not have appeared in any Spanish websites or magazines, and sales would have been almost non-existant. And now, consider the total cost of the Project vs the cost of localization. 1%? Even less? And for 1% of the cost, perhaps sales have .. doubled? tripled? (consider all the Spanish speaking countries).

So perhaps translating into Swedish is not worth it, as they all speak English anyway... but I think in Spanish it's fundamental. ANd now I'll keep go back to translating some Vodafone stuff I have stuck in my throat. Yuck! I wanna play something!!!! Or at least, translate something that is fun!!!

[Safaquel]

Hah, there's lot of opinions going on there. But personally I would like a separate sub-forum for discussions of translations. Very sound idea, and we can go with multiple threads for weighing opinions.

My personal decision with Xenonauts was to attempt to localize the game as much as possible, using traditional terms and words sometimes exclusive to classic literature, where applicable. It helps, I think, to actually immerse a local player into the spirit of the game, like translation of character's name and surname can give us both immersion and additional understanding of the character.

The game should not sound or read or seem foreign, really. That is the actual difference between a translation and a localization.

[a333]

Your words are making me think of a Spanish game market as of last hope for the gaming industry. What's making Spain so special?

Spanish speaking people do, in general, suck at foreign languages.

Well, you know, same goes for the USA gamers. You know why. No offence.

I am tired of seeing how many AAA titles undersell in Spain because people complain of the awful translation

And this people probably saying they could do it better?

Well, here is their chance. I'm sure every localisation will be open for suggestion and critics. And that's much better than the closed commercial localisation process which is basically, pig in a poke. Community localisations are great, at least, when there is somebody who can make willful decisions not to mess around the same strings over and over again.

I don't know about the quality of the Spanish x-com translation.

Russian one was awful. Suppression skill descriptions was translated as "Weapon shooting with the special net which immobilizes the enemy." And the skill name was, you know, "Menacing rifle"! I know about the localisation restrictions, but.. "Rifle suppression" -> "Menacing rifle"? What are we, ten years old? And that's not the only case, the game is full of this shit. Money can be well spend, but those were not.

[Chris]

Nixacalo - you make some good points, but I don't think sales of Xenonauts are going to triple if we translate it into Spanish. The English-speaking market is by far the biggest (except possibly for Chinese, which will be bigger in raw numbers but smaller in revenues) and is also the one in which we have the most contact with journalists and distributors.

The number of Steam clients in Spanish is tiny compared to English, German or Russian, for example, so I'm not sure our game is ever going to penetrate too deeply into Venezuela even if we do have a good translation. So it's not quite that straightforward!

[Safaquel]

So Chris, I don't really know why you are unwilling to spend money on something that would most definitely be profitable. A community-based translation might do for hardcore gamers, but it won't appeal to the public in general nor will let you launch a game properly via standard or non-standard channels (magazines, mouth to mouth, free demos, etc.). In this, quality is important.

!

I think you rather mix 'community translation' with 'unprofessional translation' and 'poor quality translation'.

The former does not imply any of the latter.

Zum beispiel, I work as a translator and interpreter. I am also not part of GoldHawk Interactive, so technically I am a member of the community.

As for the pros and cons, you should have seen all the early russian translations of Terry Pratchett's novels, all those... names, man. I can't even begin to explain it in this post, but the variation was hilarious.

In the end someone took over the commercial translations, and that guy obviously loved both Pratchett's books and russian language, which is why we ended up with new translated editions that are decent.

And as far as marketing is concerned, it is tougher still to judge.

You have to remember that by and large, while a cult in and of itself, X-COM was a niche game. Xenonauts appeals to the same crowd. I think... yeah, I believe that what they are doing right now is correct.

This game may not even need any marketing.

Also what I think you're missing is that Chris so far is laying ground to possibly distance GoldHawk from community translations. If people like it -- okay, if not - GoldHawk's game had nothing to do with it.

[Chris]

Also, I will open a new sub-forum for translations then.

[Safaquel]

Also, I will open a new sub-forum for translations then.

If I may say so, w00t.

[a333]

Chris, if so, can i make a thread for instructions and tools for a font making? Asian translators are gonna need that.

[nixcalo]

Well, I was so tired of translating a boring Vodafone text that I made a big conceptual mistake, when I was speaking that Ufo EU's sales doubled or tripled, I was thinking at the time of doubling/tripling the amount of sales regarding UK sales ALONE in comparison to global sales in the Spanish market (and that comparison is rather stupid, now that I think of it=. I don't know why I did that, I hope that didn't debunk my whole argument. Evidently, translating UFO UE to Spanish would more likely amount to an global increase in sales from 10-20% (I have no data to back this up but it seems a reasonable assumption). In any case it's a large amount since the amount of effort involved in translation is much less than the effort involved in, say, creating, coding or designing a game, and most certainly profitable.

[nixcalo]

Yss, I agree that a community translator might be a great translator, but if no payment is involved... then there is no way to complain about the quality. It's true that the correspondence between "great translations" and "commercial/professional translations" is not biyective. At least, in commercial relationships, if you do not agree with the quality, you have a legal right to withhold or penalize the payment and you have the right to complain or force the translator to modify it. In my experience, the first one who takes a go in a translation is the one translation that remains, because a knowledgeable individual might try to translate something that is untranslated, but it's less likely that he/she would try to perfect something that is badly translated.

In any case, I would advocate that Xenonauts be translated to all major markets. I am sure many gamers would make a good job at translation, I just think it would be a bit more risky.. but the question is.. what is safest? To assign the translation to someone who is an expert in Xcom and lacks language expertise... or assign the translation to someone who is an expert translator but lacks Xcom expertise? Aah... that's a tough point to decide. What I am sure of is that it would be definitely be worth it.

And damn it, Xcom was not that of a cult game, was it? I mean, wasn't it a big sales hit at the moment?

[crusherven]

What constitutes the major markets? Spanish, French, Italian, German, Russian? Korean, Japanese, Chinese?

[nixcalo]

Well, it depends on the product you are selling. Considering Xenonauts, these would be my considerations. Number of speaking people is one. Another one is closeness of culture (so Chinese is kind of out, or Hindi, or Pakistani). Third would be strength of gaming industry. Fourth would be gaming equipment available for gamers (in other words, income). With these factors in consideration, I would consider for Xenonauts the following...

1.- English (by far the most important market, both in Europe and the rest of the world).

2.- German (not many people but economically strong)

3.- French (not many speakers, but most of them in Europe, economically strong)

4.- Spanish (many people, some millions in Europe, many millions in America, harder to reach but with some very active gaming countries (Argentina, Mexico...)

5.- Russia. Many gamers there, apparently... although not an economic power yet.

[Chris]

The new sub-forum is up, post what you want and tomorrow morning I'll tidy it up and work out how we use it tomorrow. Yes, a333 I think your fonts post would be useful too.

In terms of language, here's the Steam install stats from their annual hardware survey: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey (click the Language drop-down)

[nixcalo]

Well, I was rather well-guided... I only did not realize the strength of the Russian comminuty.. but I almost nailed it, just insert Russian right after English and you got it. Yep, I do agree those are correct stats, although I am quite surprised by Russian power... 15%? Globally??? But as you can see, French is only a bit ahead of Spanish, and the rest of the countries are way behind.

[Schnittertm]

Here is my point to the discussion on translation qualtiy of professional translator. A few months ago there was a report on game localisations in a German games magazine (http://www.gamestar.de/index.cfm?pid=675&pk=2569679) on how they are done and why the translation and/or voice actors often seem of lesser quality than the original version (this pertaining mainly to triple A titles, but being applicable to many other translations too). The main gist of the article was, that the professional translators get sent the text, sometimes complete, sometimes in chunks with the assignement to translate it. Those translators have never seen the game and often never will, which leads to a problem, he will often have to decide by the seat of his pants how to translate certain words or phrases that have potential different meanings in the target language. One brief example mentioned is the word 'threat' to which no context is given and which does carry different meanings in German, either 'Drohung' = a vocal threat made by someone or 'Bedrohung' = a physical/mental threat that can cause potential physical harm.

Similar things happen with voice acting, the voice actor are given their script, never having seen the scene for which they are voice acting, not having proper instructions in the scripts on how to deliver the lines and therefore the result will be lackluster voice acting, for which you often can not blame the voice actors themselves.

The thing is, a translation done by a professional might still 'suck', maybe not in the worksmanship, but in the overall tone and immersement factor for the gamer, as the translators are often just hired to translate and are not give the correct context.

Community translation on the other hand can , but don't have to suffer from bad workmanship. If the people to translate, correct and adjust the script are good at working together and also know how to translate stuff (e.g. when to translate more literally or when to translate meaning) then a community translation has a much better chance of giving an immersion factor than a professional translation ever might have done. Why is this so? The people are comitted to the game and to the experience and are already immersed in the universe, something that lacks with most professional translator that are mere mercenaries in comparision, translating what they've been given and then moving on and never looking back.

As some of you may know, I already did a rough German translation of the strings.xml (posted in the modding subforum) to show how a translated version could look like. I did run into the problem of how to translate some of the things, as I have yet to play the game into the further endstages. Especially with the body armor and the later appearing power armor (is this akin to something like Space Marine power armor in WH40K?) or if I should translate any designations into German or not. For now I decided to translate most of them, but luckily, if I have to change it, it can be done easily with the right text editor (e.g. with Vim's 'search and replace' functionality).

The main thing I see in a community translation, is that it should not be a one-man show. I for one would be involving the community from square one. I would want to settle on one or two main translators however, as a lot of cooks spoil the porridge according to a german proverb. Community involvement in stage one or pre-production if you'd want to call it that, would be the decision on the translation of designations and item names (e.g. should English designations for aircraft like Shrike and Valkyrie and such be kept in English or would they want a translated version).

After the decisions have been made, you'd need testers for your translation and maybe someone who can help with editing and distribute the workload between the different parties. The translator(s) goes first, does his batch of translation, sends to a tester/editor to check for errors, etc.

This way an immersive translation might come around that rivals or even surpasses professional translation done for games. Naturally, this is only the case if the right people are chose. Someone that only translates with the help of a dictionary and little knowledge of as in this case English will not do and the translation will end up in a mess.

On a personal note, I translated the first few Xenopedia entries up to and including the Mig-32. It's only the first five or six entries, and you'll either have them from the start or shortly after it (Entries on F-17, CH-48, Autocannon and such) and I don't think much of those would change. Right now I think I'll translate a few more of those which I think will remain in the game, mainly early game stuff (Ceasans, Alien Alloys, Alien Plasma pistols and such).

From my experience with the strings.xml, as Chris already mentioned, it is a bit unstructured, since there are strings insterspersed that have to do with the news ticker or entries for the option menu keybindings are in several places, but mostly it is already workable. I have not found many strings that are still missing. Some of the things I did notice however were:

- New Game, Load Game and Game Options on the first screen seem to have strings in the strings.xml, but still show the English version

- No string for 'Funds' in the subscreens

- No string for 'Unassigned' in the Soldier and Vehicle subscreens

- Apparent strings for 'Fuel level' and 'Paused - Press Space to resume' for Aircombatmode not seeming to work

- Strings for soldiers nationality in the soldiersnames.xml files

- Groundcombatmode Tooltip for Equipmenttile only working when in the grenadeselction screen of the tile

- No tooltip on End turn button showing and End turn button seems to be a graphical element with no text string to adjust.

- '%'-character in text (with- or without ASCII code) making tooltips dislay only ####, as xml seems to expect a variable to refer to and not finding it. Workaround for now, write out percent instead of using the character itself.

- All tooltips in Arial and case sensitive, most other strings printed in the Xenonauts font with only capital characters. This as a reminder to write case sensitive for tooltip entries, with other entries it does not matter as it will be rendered out in all capitals anyway

Other than that everything that I checked seemed to work out fine, other than the occasional I have to be more brief with some entries or they will overlap. Curse you, lenght of German text, curse you.

On the style of the Xenopedia entries. If someone translates them, the style should be that of a very self-assured scientist, not really a military person. This head scientist is certain that his intellect is above that of his peers and definitely above that of everyone else, the commander included at times. His demanor is bordering on arrogance, even overstepping that border at times. This is the gist I got from translating the few Xenopedia entries I worked on.

The style of other entries (e.g. research descriptions, item tooltips) should probably be more in a neutral and informative tone.

Oh, and sorry for this wall of text.

Edited April 2, 2013 by Schnittertm

[Safaquel]

Coupla valid points here, but I am a bit apprehensive about the 'not one-man show' thing. It is understandable, but if the two guys differ vastly in style, it's going to be noticeable. Something to be mentioned in the guidelines, definitely, and probably 'the Chris' is going to have his own two shillings' worth to add there.

I will try and gather my thoughts on the translation guidelines and post them later today, maybe this evening.

[Chris]

Well, there are two possibilities. We can have "competing" translations for each language, of which one is eventually selected to be bundled with the game and translators have individual threads in the forums for them. Whoever has their name on the thread makes the ultimate decisions about what goes in and what does not go into their translation, but naturally that doesn't rule out co-operation between different people.

Alternatively, we can have a specific thread for each language and force people to collaborate there.

I think the former solution is the better solution. If people don't agree with another person's approach, they can do their own translation. I guess some kind of community vote could be used to choose the eventual winners.

However, I don't have a problem crediting multiple translators for a particular language, so I imagine people will probably find some merit in collaboration - whether one person is doing the main translation and the other person proof-reading and editing it and providing suggestions, or whatever. Most people on the forums are intelligent adults and I'm sure that they can work together as such

EDIT - just to add, I think Schnittertm makes good points about the "open" nature of the translation giving benefits. We've benefited from developing the game in an open manner because people point out our errors and contribute their own ideas, and I think you'd be missing out if you did the translation as a one man show without seeking ongoing feedback on your work (even if you don't act on all of it).

[khulat]

I have seen people use http://www.getlocalization.com/ for this purpose. It may be an option for you.

[a333]

Why'd you edited the PA out?