Backers Only (for now): Localization Testing

Hey all,

We're starting to test out a new crowd sourced localization tool called "GetLocalization.com". So far it seems pretty easy to use, creating an account requires no personal information other than an email address.

I've loaded up some strings for translation, these are actually for advertisements for pre-orders of Planetary Annihilation. In general, we won't translate these, but it's a good way for us to test the system and see what you all think of it - those willing or who have already volunteered to help us translate.

For now this is limited to backers, but will probably expand in the future. We only have German listed as a translation language (Please ignore English - not sure why it's there as that's the default language for us), as we wanted to run some test ads focused in Germany as well as North America. We can add other languages if someone wants to help - just post in the thread and I can add another language really easily.

If you want to help out, please continue on!

Step 1: Go to http://www.getlocalization.com/PALocalization/ and you'll see our project. First thing you'll need to do is register an account.

Step 2: Your screen will look like this:


Select the German link under "Status: 100% Complete".. It says 100% complete because I did a test run with Google Translate, which is, as you can guess, often laughably bad.

Step 3: Finally the screen where you can enter translations looks like this:


Here you can look at all the different lines to be translated on the left, the middle section is the currently selected string, and on the right is any chatter about the project.

For each string you can either enter a new translation if none of the ones in the middle are decent, or if someone's done a good one, rather than re-enter it, vote up the existing best translation.

As I said, for now we're just testing this system out to see if it'll work once we're ready to start localizing actual game strings. Once we're ready, we'll probably make a game out of getting translations done, with some hopefully fun "thank you" things for the most active contributors for each language, etc.

Thanks all!

Hm... what the...

Why? But why? :?:

Edit: Now it works...

Interesting.. I've only tried their website on Chrome.. and maybe Safari. What browser are you using?

Firefox... but it works now. Don't know what the problem was. But it was not for long. So... everything is okay now. :mrgreen:

Oha Awesome perfect *helps*.. arg german is finished lol. well I will try to help in englisch too. Ah I see it was only a test lol.

I guess I can do a major part of a Dutch translation, as Dutch is my native language.

It is not easy to translate without knowing the context.

For example: "Show No Mercy" or "Be ruthless"
Are these orders for a user?

After I've looked at some texts, I think it will be especially commercials, right? For the website?

But the context is absolute relevant to translate the text.

Seems to have issues with Firefox. Tried to click on Spanish to begin translations, gives me a blank screen. Using Chrome works fine.

If possible upload only whole sentences not parts, without context it's rather difficult to translate into german...

for example:
Command Them to Destroy

german:
Ihnen befehlen zu zerstören,

but if the phrase would be:
command them to destory something

german:
Ihnen befehlen etwas zu zerstören

so it won't work to use parts of translated sentences and mold them together...

Dutch translation is complete.

I am currently working trough the strings, and I think it would be even better to give us whole paragraphs to make sure that we get the context right!

Couple things:

Translation is part of it. Validation is another part of it. Looking at the strings and determining which are "best". Right now, if you looks at the German translations which show as "complete", there are a few translations for a number of them, but no indication on quality.



This part is where you use the thumb to vote on the best/most accurate translations.

And yes, there was almost no context on these because they were simply tiny little google/facebook ads. That's probably my first complaint about the way this tool works. We had them broken down per ad, but it just jumbles all the strings together with no indication of what's what. It's one of the reason I wanted to test this out on a really small sample set.

There's a number of things I would fix/change if we had made this tool ourselves, but it seems pretty good for what it is. Plus, it allows community involvement from people who know the subject matter to input on the translations, which is something you rarely get working with external loc teams.

well i wrote:
"Befehlige Sie zur Zerstörung"

But "best" is even more relative, if you don't know the context, right?

For example: There is a magazine title like "Command Them to Destroy".
If you have the same text on a button in the game, the context is totally different and you have to translate different.

The format of most of these is as follows (posting the JSON we're importing from):

{
"HEADLINE" : {
"message" : "Command Them to Destroy",
"description" : "headline text"
},
"LINE1" : {
"message" : "Planetary Annihilation. Next Gen RTS. Pre-order for special pricing and exclusive content!",
"description" : "description"
}

}

If that makes it a little more clear. Basically, they're broken into headline/body format, as the ads don't have much room for content.

And therein lies my biggest complaint about what you guys can see. It doesn't provide the context of which are paired together, so it makes even less sense. >.<

This is the minimal context, which is needed.

Give us a context. :mrgreen:
"advertising" is a context. "ingame text" is a context.

If you say "advertising" (and it seems to be this), then the context is clear to me.

Sorry about that. In my first post I mentioned these were for ad's, but I should have called it out more clearly, as it kind of got buried in the text.

@yourtime (yeah Österreicher ^^)

"Befehlige Sie zur Zerstörung"

difficult to say what fits better without more context,

I agree with rorschachphoenix we need more context to determine the correct translation,
maybe you could write in the comments if it is meant as a question, suggestion, order, shouted, ads, descriptions etc..

Command Them to Destroy

Ihnen befehlen zu zerstören
Befehle Ihnen zu zerstören
Kommandiere sie zu zerstören...

there are a lot of possibilities..

this whole translation crowding is nice, the next step would be to see directly, where the text will be needed, to see how long it should be and if it fits there.

yeah
Well, It is clear that "Destroy" is used as subject, so I think the translation should be a 'Nomen' and not used as verb. That's why I wrote Zerstörung. "Ihnen", dont hang yourself onto it. 'Sie' is also a form for many people. "Befehl" is shorter than "Kommand"

Ooopppssss...

I'l go to work and translate the text.