Translations

[Antsan]

I know, it's a little bit early, but I would like the idea of translating stuff into German. I could learn a few things and you could widen your audience.

 

The earlier you would start the earlier the German version would be available.

I like reading storys more than playing games to get the story either way, so it would be an opportunity to me to get to know the story without feeling like cheating.

 

I am writing storys by myself (samples are in German, so it would be a little bit hard to judge if they are good for you, I think), so I don't think I would produce shitty text.

And I'm fairly good at understanding English texts, so that would be no problem either.

 

Never coming true, something for later, something to do before I start or can I start immediatly?

[Crispy]

Localisation isn't something we've really looked at before as far as I know. I think Doom 3 has support for it, but we haven't made use of it. So I suppose before getting any localisation done we'd need someone to look at how Doom 3 manages internationalization, and what changes we need to make to leverage that.

 

(Just so we're on the same page: I'm using "internationalization" to mean "allowing different translations to be presented to the user", and "localisation" to mean the entire process of translating the game, changing things that are culture-specific or whatever so that everything makes sense to non-English speakers, etc.)

 

Note that the text in the mod is likely to change before release, so doing any localisation now seems rather premature.

 

Also, being a toolset and not a campaign, TDM itself doesn't have a whole lot of text. There's menu text, built-in item names, any built-in signs with English text on them*, AI voices**... can't think of much else.

 

* If we have any of those - we do have signs, but I think most of them just have symbols on them? Text is usually added at runtime with Doom 3 anyway, making this a mission-specific issue in most cases.

 

**Maybe we'll have to use subtitles, if we localise speech at all. I don't think we have the resources to do voice acting for N different languages - this is probably the biggest problem we have w.r.t. localisation.

 

Everything else (objectives, readables, readmes, etc.) is mission-specific, and hence can't be provided for in the development of the mod. Though it would be nice if the handful of unrelated maps we're shipping with were localised as well.

 

There's also DarkRadiant, our map editor. It's all in English right now. I don't know if it would be considered worth it to localise DarkRadiant; mappers will need some English anyway because all the documentation is English. Translating all of that would be a huge task.

 

While I think localisation is important, it's not quite important enough (IMO) to pull people away from other tasks to pay attention to it just yet. Maybe it should wait until post-release. Unless we get an internationalisation expert on board who can do all the required work to prepare for localisation without any other team members being affected, it will probably have to wait.

[STiFU]

Yeah better concentrate on important stuff!! I can never understand why translations are necessary. After all english is an universal language and especially in germany we learn it at least 4 years, but in average 5 years which is even more extendable to 8 years. And a recent change in our school system makes my little stepbrother learn english from the third grade on instead of the fifth, which was when I started learning my first foreign language. So today you can learn english up to 10 years here and everyone who can't understand it afterwards is a fool and I wonder how he passed preschool.

 

I was never a language person either, mathematics and scientific subjects were rather my strengths, but english is easy and everyone should be capable of speaking or at least understang it... (I guess this was my first offensive post in a public forum, but I just felt it had to be said!)

 

One more thing, I think other translations are needed much more than the german one. In some countries you just don't learn english that much. So if you start translating, better start with those important ones. In the end, germany only gets translations of commercial games, because the game-market is so huge here and not because of an actualy need for it.

[Rabid_Kiwi]

I can help with a japanese one!

From an outsiders point of veiw Id have to agree that its a bit unnecessary though

[Komag]

I would suggest that the WIKI (which is currently not available but hopefully back soon) is what needs translating the most. This is a HUGE task though, so maybe we could prioritize the pages somewhat, so that the most important basics get translated first.

[Antsan]

While I think localisation is important, it's not quite important enough (IMO) to pull people away from other tasks to pay attention to it just yet. Maybe it should wait until post-release. Unless we get an internationalisation expert on board who can do all the required work to prepare for localisation without any other team members being affected, it will probably have to wait.

 

That's what I am offering. I am no regular team member. Although I am not an expert. And I couldn't handle the technical part. I am just not experienced enough.

 

 

One more thing, I think other translations are needed much more than the german one. In some countries you just don't learn english that much. So if you start translating, better start with those important ones. In the end, germany only gets translations of commercial games, because the game-market is so huge here and not because of an actualy need for it.

Okay, that's logical. But I don't know any other languages than German and English good enough.

 

 

I would suggest that the WIKI (which is currently not available but hopefully back soon) is what needs translating the most. This is a HUGE task though, so maybe we could prioritize the pages somewhat, so that the most important basics get translated first.

Sounds good, but for that you would need someone to decide, what is important and what s not. And that would need the time of the team members.

[Macsen]

Of course the interface (menu, objective screen, and so on) should be available in different languages. But rather than translating mission content I'd rather see people release original content in different languages. I'd glady play a German mission, set in a German part of the dark mod City. My first mission is going to be set in an Italian part of town, for instance, and I'd be annoyed if people translated the Italian names and so on to English or German because they're as much a part of the setting as the architecture.

[STiFU]

Streetsigns or references to buildings and names would be kept in the default language, like in every other tanslation. It's only about the rest of the readables...

[Antsan]

I've never seen Names being translated. Okay, the Shalbridge Cradle was "Die Shalbebridge-Wiege", but thats not so bad I think.

 

It's only about content that isn't defined by game. Names are seperated from language by being defined by some special object and not a general idea.

[demagogue]

but english is easy and everyone should be capable of speaking or at least understang it... (I guess this was my first offensive post in a public forum, but I just felt it had to be said!)

 

It's just easy for you to say considering that English is a Germanic language.

 

My thinking is that localization will be largely handled the same way it is for Dromed FMs ... non-English FMs will continue to be made in their native languages by non-anglophone authors. And then the author will work with someone to translate all the readables, etc, into English for everyone else (English-speaking or otherwise) that doesn't speak that language. And then once in a blue moon a fan might translate a classic English FM (TDM's equivalent of Calendra's Legacy) into their non-English native language on their own initiative.

 

Documentation and tuts, etc, in the case of dromed these things got translated into non-English languages by some builders that wanted them for their own tutorial sites, and took the initiative to do it.

 

The main difference between TDM and TMA is things like guard barks and interface, that got translated in the original game. Not sure what you want to do about those.

Edited December 14, 2007 by demagogue

[Crispy]

That's what I am offering. I am no regular team member. Although I am not an expert. And I couldn't handle the technical part. I am just not experienced enough.

I'm afraid it would be rather technical.

 

If you or anyone else wants to try and see if you can handle it, you can do so without needing any access to TDM assets, since the first task would be to find out how internationalisation works in Doom 3. For that you'd just need a copy of Doom 3 and some good investigative skills.