Backers Only (for now): Localization Testing

Just a short note: A translation is not always useful. Sometimes a new text is better.

"Command them to destroy" is easy to translate, but it sound strange in German.

Totally agreed, and you guys helping on this is helping me a lot to figure out how to do just that.

One thing that I'm not sure there's any way to let you guys see is this page:


Which provides a lot of the context, especially when you can see the file names, and then the breakdown of text. I may have to use a combination of getlocalization.com web page and our forums so you guys know exactly what you're looking at. Pondering. Anyway, this is already a more successful test of the system in the first two hours than I expected in the first few weeks. Proof again that you guys are AWESOME.

Absolutely! And that's the other good part of this. Many expressions in a game are pretty colloquial, so a direct translation is not always best.

As far as i understand the original sentence a more appropriate translation would be:
"Kommandiere sie, um zu Zerstören" (which however sounds little strange )

The original sentence lacks of an object what to destroy, which makes it rather difficult to get the actual meaning of the sentence. However I understand it the way, the message of this sentence is that you "command your units with the aim to destroy", instead of "tell your units to destroy".
But I'm not so sure about this, perhaps will cause a new thread in the german subforum.

This!

We don't have to find the exact translation but the best translation, which is a big difference.

Command Them to Destroy

this sentence is driving me crazy...

Because it makes no sense in German.

"Command a huge army of robots to defeat your enemy!"

No problem to translate that.

[Edit: There is a reason why there are advertising copywriters. :mrgreen: Every language has it's own pros and cons.]

Ahh awesome!

well I am sure this whole system will get more confident in translating, after 1-2 weeks with 100-200 user to vote the best translation, then it is much better I am sure. So don't worry people, it has time to get better

no you guys are awesome !

PS: I am quite sure the best translation for that Sentence (directly) is: "Befehlige Sie zur Zerstörung"

What other languages are planned?

Well, for this test, German was the focus, as that was the goal of our upcoming ads. However, for the game proper, I'd probably try and get translations for at least the following:

- German
- French
- Spanish
- Italian
- Russian
- Korean <-- (I would LOVE to get started on Korean translations if we have any native language speakers (NLS) on the forums.
Edit: Oh yah, Arabic too.

And whatever other languages people want. One really nice thing, is you guys can add additional languages if you want to make a pass at em, which allows the community to really push the languages they most want.

Don't forget Chinese (simplified and traditional). HUGE potential market there, plus half the people where I live are Chinese of one sort or another.

What is really simple: You give us the english page with the advertising and then we translate it in German. Then everyone knows exactly what the context of the corresponding text is. We can see it with our own eyes.

I would love to be a part of it. :mrgreen:

Pictures would make things much easier
And I'd really love to help you guys out with that, I normally play games only in english, because there are games with horrible german translations (hitman absolution)

one question: did you add the same strings multiple times on purpose or is that a problem with the site?

I would love that, but there are no tools that easily allow that. And while translating is a hard part, getting it where we need it when it's all done is part of the problem, and the value of a website like this is it automates a lot of the "busy work" for us, because we can push and pull entire string sets with a few simple curl commands.

Anyway, like I said, this has already been hugely useful, and one thing I hadn't realized, the "context" field is visible on the project strings page:


Now that I know that, and have shown you all where it's located, I can make much better use of that field to provide clear context going forward. It won't always be 100%, and it may get supplemented with a post in the forums to clarify a specific screen, but that combined should really provide a solid contextual understanding. And during alpha and beta, obviously it will be much easier to get this sort of thing started.

This will help a lot! I'm so exited to be here. :mrgreen:

We're translating, for awesome :mrgreen:

Translation to Portuguese (Brazil) completed! Now its on the quality level.

Ill try and spend some time to help you guys with that (german)

but its hard to translate some o f the phrases, as they are out of context.
like
"Command Them to Destroy"

There are quite a few ways to translate it, and it would have different meanings. you should probably enter longer phrases instead of little bits.

And some translations already entered for german are HORRIBLE.
Sry I dont know the people who entered such things:

Planetary Annihilation. Next Gen RTS. Pre-order for special pricing and exclusive content!
Planetary Annihilation. Next Gen RTS. Vorbestellen für günstigere Preise und exklusive Inhalte!

That is no german at all. This is google translate. "vorbestellen für"? doesnt exist in german language.

I'm curios how spell- and grammar-checking will work out. More exactly where to mention errors, so the translator will notice.

Since these in particular are ads, the total length of the strings is _very_ limited.

But an interesting thing about localization, is that in general, space is always limited. Especially with languages that tend to run long, like German, when compared to their French or English equivalents.

The length of ads is limited by where we're placing the ads. Both Facebook and Google have hard limits to the max text length. Similarly, any UI we do has limits due to the the minimum supported resolution, how scaleable the text is, especially where we have to used fixed length fonts, etc.