Let's finally push the translations out!

#1

So, I’m sitting on a few finished and nearly-finished translations that I have not pushed out yet. I’m terribly sorry about this as many people have put in a lot of hard work and I want people to enjoy what they’ve created.

Here’s where we’re at:
–German: text basically done, might need some proof-reading
–Czech: text done, might need a proof-read
–Japanese: text done, needs more font support from me
–Russian: I think text is done, needs more font support from me in cutscenes
–Chinese: I’m in touch with a chinese translator but I haven’t started playing with this just yet. Definitely needs font support
–Korean: can’t remember
–Spanish: can’t remember
–Polish: can’t remember
–French: can’t remember
–Portuguese: can’t remember

Every translation basically needs the following things to be considered well and truly done:
[list=1]
:t074kwvy]Text (completely translated text)/:m:t074kwvy]
:t074kwvy] Proof-reading (fix typos, mispellings, errors, etc)/:m:t074kwvy]
:t074kwvy] UI tweaks (when words don’t fint)/:m:t074kwvy]
:t074kwvy] Font support (for occasional foreign characters, and/or whole new font sets (cyrillic, asian, etc))/:m:t074kwvy]
:t074kwvy] Community sign-off from native speakers that translation “looks good enough”/:m:t074kwvy][/list:o:t074kwvy]

I must admit I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so I didn’t want to put out translations that weren’t totally ready. However, this whole thing has been a learning process and I feel that perfectionism might have been a mistake. If I had put stuff out earlier, we’d have gotten feedback and could have improved it all by now. For instance, the (mostly complete) Russian version of Defender’s Quest is already up on pirate sites. That http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LarsDoucet/20120222/91144/, but it does signal that I’m not filling a need – right now the pirates are providing a genuinely better product for Russians!

I really appreciate all the time and effort fans have put in on this, and my new feeling is it’s best to just put these out, give credit to the fans who have made them, slap “beta” tags on various translations as necessary and note that some may still need some work, and start getting some feedback. I have some more work on my end that’s required to support these translations, so I’ll push through that as I can.

(For those who are worried about this distracting from Defender’s Quest II - it’s a good point, but the main reason I’m doing this is to prepare DefQ1 for any winter sales that our partner sites might run, and expand our international audience, hopefully driving some pre-orders. I’m also working on a small super secret DefQ1 update anyway, and it makes sense to fit this in).

Now that I have experience with this under my belt, I’ve also learned I should get this taken care of much earlier in the process. I’ll try to hire professionals for the biggest languages for DEFQ2, but fan translations will always be welcome, including “alternative” translations if someone disagrees with the official ones :wink:

#2

I’ve been lazy on the PT one (can’t imagine the work i’ll have on cutscenes), but I did finished the bonus challenges, status effects, defenders (and their skills) and achievements. Currently working on journal and map dialogues (~1/5 is done!).

EDIT: “RECALL: +XXX Psi” translated to PT doesn’t fit.

#3

Thanks!

There’ll be a few more additions to data_items and data_system, but no more than a dozen short lines or so. I’ll pass those along in a bit when I get a new test build up on our servers.

#4

Good! Post again here when you update DQ, that way I can add the lines instantly, because I am currently very online!

Btw, I had to restart data_system.csv because of that nasty bug. :frowning: Well, at least I will not have any missing lines. :stuck_out_tongue:

#5

— Begin quote from "larsiusprime"

–Czech: text done, might need a proof-read

— End quote

Nope. That is, it’s been proof-read already in its entirety. All remaining issues at play are at UI design level, for some things there simply isn’t a good linguistic solution. I’m OK with it being released as is, with a disclaimer that will mention that the translation is as finished as it could be given these technical issues :slight_smile:

UI tweaks (when words don’t fint) - I can have another look at the game to tell you what I’d need done, but I’m fairly sure that you have all the info somewhere.

Community sign-off from native speakers that translation “looks good enough” - I don’t know how many Czech users play the game, but given my experience with language skills of computer gamers (as a volunteer admin in a 15k-user community for several years) I dare say that many of them wouldn’t recognize a good translation if it jumped up and bit their nose off :slight_smile:

— Begin quote from ____

Now that I have experience with this under my belt, I’ve also learned I should get this taken care of much earlier in the process.

— End quote

I do not think that “much earlier” is the main issue. I mean, not in a situation where you actually release the game and then keep expanding and polishing it for another year and releasing it again then :slight_smile: - for me the main problem with the translations is not pushing the last few steps into the goal. I mean, it’s been so long since I last worked on it that I completely forgot what the problems and issues outstanding are.
(That’s not an objection though, our second baby is 8 months now so I can fully understand that your mind was rightfully elsewhere :slight_smile: )

#6

If you need some proof-reading for german, I could help out there.
Though I have no idea about the procedure here ^^

Edit:
Don’t know how up to date it is, but I looked in the locales folder and in the de-DE folder the csv Files seem to be encoded in ANSI (at least Notepad++ Encoding is set to ANSI when I open them), and when I switch to UTF-8 all the umlauts (I still find it strange that there isn’t any “real” name for that in the english language ^^) are broken.

And is there any documentation about what $N, $MCG, * and the like mean? (From context I can guess some of them, but I don’t really know with some if they’re just supposed to show that character (like with the “*”) or if it’s some placeholder/variable)

#7

— Begin quote from "Yinan"

If you need some proof-reading for german, I could help out there.
Though I have no idea about the procedure here ^^

Edit:
Don’t know how up to date it is, but I looked in the locales folder and in the de-DE folder the csv Files seem to be encoded in ANSI (at least Notepad++ Encoding is set to ANSI when I open them), and when I switch to UTF-8 all the umlauts (I still find it strange that there isn’t any “real” name for that in the english language ^^) are broken.

And is there any documentation about what $N, $MCG, * and the like mean? (From context I can guess some of them, but I don’t really know with some if they’re just supposed to show that character (like with the “*”) or if it’s some placeholder/variable)

— End quote

$N is actually , right? It means a line break.
$MCG = Azra’s name.

  • = “every/any” i.e when you want an achieved to be, well, achieved when you complete any level on Extreme, you put *.
#8

The “*” at the beginning of a cutscene line was simply there to indicate that there were variables inside the text, so it should be parsed first rather than just printed as-is. I think this is unecessary now for cutscenes but I’m not sure.

$N or signifies a line break. I’ll double-check the german files, they SHOULD be UTF-8.

As for the rest of the variables, they are usually placeholders for game variables in various formats, like “Takes % damage” . If you have some specific questions, I can describe what they all mean.

Also this thread has the full lowdown:

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1234
#9

Oops, I mixed the XML files with the CSV ones. Hehe. Sorry. XP

#10

Hello,
just have to say, that the current russian translation (which is currently located in the game resources) is incomplete and contains a lot of mistakes like “The End of the User Agreement” or “There’s even not a time to burn the bodies more” (anti-spam prevents me to paste this examples in rus). So, it’s just a dull machine translation, except some short messages which is obviously translated by a “not so smart” guy (with a couple of grammar mistakes, too expressive, not seriously where it should be (e.g. “Zingy” and “Charming” instead of “Perfect”).
Dunno if you’ve already found another version, then it might be ok.

UPD: Saw the localisation, http://steamcommunity.com/app/218410/discussions/0/558746089457402163/?tscn=1390904835 by Dimon485. This one’s rocks =)