Backers Only (for now): Localization Testing

I completely agree with.
I've filled many french translation but often by supposing on what the context will be. So, some can be quite wrong...

The harder one to translate I think is "Save on annihilation", it lacks definitively on context and the word "annihilation" exists in French with a quite different meaning.

The translation is not correct! The imperative of the verb 'befehlen' is 'befiehl'.
But 'befehlen' is much too personal for my taste in this military context, so I propose 'befehligen' and then the German sentence would be "Befehlige Roboter zu zerstören" which is still awkward

A good translation is hard to achieve, but a community like ours can do it!

Cheerio!

With the context (headline, first line of description...) it helps a bit, but some are still hard to translate, as they are meant to be punchlines.
"Save on annihilation" is not the hardest, IMHO, because "annihilation" is also a French word, so the play on the game's name can be kept. But others won't work as well, because the translation isn't quite as punchy and it's hard to find a sentence that would fill the same role.
Is there any French publicist here?

The hardest thing in german or french (as I understand both) is that we need to know basic things like "Who do I speak to?", is it infinitive or imperative? In english it's quite easy to have basic written punchy lines but it's really not that easy in other languages.

I've noticed just now, but in the dutch translations on the right side, there is now a small field called "context"

It's enough to know where it's going to be, so it really helps how the sentence should be structured(for dutch, but i'm pretty sure it helps in all languages)

That's just it !

If you want it to be punchy, you can just use imperative, but (and I'll speak as a french native) even using imperative, "Détruisez des planètes !", is anything but punchy, it's looking pretty soft actually (I could even say boring...).
If you want it really punchy, then you'd use only one word, like "Détruisez !", "Annihilez !", "Conquérez !", etc...
If you go into complex sentences, it just looses all its power :?

That's a good point, but then one word can also feel too bland or unspecific. Maybe we should try to go with shorter words, like "Détruisez des mondes!" or "Brisez des mondes!" (though this last one doesn't have the same ring to it).

it is interesting hearing people talk about translations and context.
shows how much the English language dosent care about context.

I'm not sure that english doesn't care about context, but it has a really simple grammar that makes it difficult to find...

Just realized... should we translate "Planetary Annihilation", or leave it in English?
Does Uber plan to market the name in English, or translate it according to the recipient nation?

Catching up on the thread since last night, but..

- Generally speaking, since our name is our trademark, we don't generally translate a proper name like Planetary Annihilation. At some publishers I worked with in the past, they would for specific territories - in particular Russian, and even Chinese on occasion, where it's culturally preferred (or so they claimed), but everywhere else, we tend to leave the name alone. For PA, I don't imagine we'll translate the name, because it is the name.
- Keep in mind, even in English, many of these little adverts are atrocious. We just have very limited space, and it's intended as a sidebar ad, so the space to make something eloquent is.. limited. More so than most translations, translating blurb ads like these will generally make for really miserable sentences in almost any other language, since even the English version isn't exactly good grammar in many cases.

I created the Danish translation and kept Planetary Annihilation untranslated because it's the game name and it packs quite the punch

Unstickying this post as well. We'll have another loc post up soon, but the test was beyond my best expectations of being successful. The next time you guys see a sticky localization post, it will be for far more permanent stuff, such as our website, and soon after, of course, the game itself.

Sounds sweet Can't wait

cool cant wait to see some of those translations.

If you want the advertisements/(game?) to be translated by volunteers, why not have a selection procedure based on education/experience? (for instance someone having a degree in sales or a certain level of education.)

I understand it's hard to manage (or set up) but it will give much more quality in advertising and/or story telling.

Personally I prefer playing games in english over dutch, as most translations are done horribly..

Hi everyone,

i just want to say, i also tried to translate some phrases to german and it's pretty hard sometimes to find the right words. ^^

But anyway i'm looking forward to help with localization, i guess it's a really nice feeling when you see "your" translated line in the game or an ad.

-DorLugas

@Devs: Could you please explain what "Divide" means? It could have several meanings.

The sentence is "Divide + Conquer Galaxies".

As far as I understand this is "Divide and Conquer" is the translation of "divide et impera". It represents some kind of military strategy, where you divide a large group/area which is hard to conquer, into several smaller parts, which can be easier conquered one after the other.
I'm not sure whether there a similar term in german.

Edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule explains it better than me

This makes sense. Thank you!