Translating WarFoundry

[IBBoard]

I was just digging around the net for mentions of WarFoundry and tripped across XHammer.be, a group of Belgian wargamers who have a topic saying that WarFoundry is "something to watch". That reminded me that the WarFoundry UI is translatable (that's what the "translations" folder is for ) but that I've ignored it for a while. If anyone knows any foreign languages and wants to supply translations then that would be a great help


[edit] For reference (in an obvious place rather than the middle of the thread) the important locations for translations are:

• Committed WinForms translations (keep an eye on the last modified dates for updates)
• Committed GTK# translations (keep an eye on the lst modified date for updates)
• Translation ticket (place to submit translations if you don't have commit access, or the ticket to commit new translations against)

[snowblizz]

English IS a foreign language... a matter of perspective..

If I get bored I'll look at translating into Finnish and Swedish. Don't hold your breaths though.

[IBBoard]

We're on a .uk domain on a US hosted server - English (or the American botch-up of it) is the 'normal' language and everything else is foreign

Finnish and Swedish would be cool. I don't know how big the Scandinavian gaming communities are, but if they're small then having a tool in their language is even better

[snowblizz]

In Scandinavia we learn English from grade 3 or 4, I forget. I learnt it watching Transformers on Sky and later Super Channel so even before I got to school.
So we are pretty proficient. We get the rulebooks in English so we have to be.

But you have to admit that when my first thought was "Sure I can translate from English into at least 2 foreign languages..." I am entitled to poke some fun at the English language.

[Frostlee]

English IS a foreign language... a matter of perspective...

anyway i think i'll be able to provide italian transaltions for the next version...
tsince most italians won't even consider it unless it is in italian, will be a must have if yuo whish to import in Dante's land...

[IBBoard]

In the UK we learn French or German (occasionally some schools offer Spanish) from Year 7 to Year 11 (Secondary School - so 11 to 16 year olds). By that point most kids seem to have lost the knack and/or interest in learning a foreign language. That, together with the fact that the US makes most of the Internet speak some form or English anyway means that we just get away with being lazy, even if we shouldn't.

It seems quite poor for GW to not translate the rules in to the Scandinavian languages. I guess Tuomas Pirinen wasn't there long enough to push for translations, and maybe the market isn't as large.

Offers on the table for translation languages so far (including some from a guy at XHammer) are:

• Finnish
• Swedish
• Italian
• Dutch
• French
• German (possibly)
• Spanish (possibly)

absolutely none of which I could contribute to

I'm also wondering whether we need to look at extensions to the army data for easy translation of those. The current method would be for someone to write a completely separate data file, which would duplicate a lot of work and would be inefficient. Perhaps some kind of translation files within the data files are needed...


[edit] I've added a Translating WarFoundry page. I added a partial example in French, but please correct me if any of the phrases don't make sense Google Translate helped in some situations, as did Google Search, but working out the right translation for "exit" was awkward so I fell back to "Quit" (which I hope is the right translation of Quit )

[snowblizz]

I was actually thinking about data file translation yes. As you say double the work... the only thing needed to change (I think) is the "name" tags for units and equipment.

BTW exit should be "Sortie", though that might only apply to physical exits... like emergency exists. My school French isn't what it used to be.

Just to show off I've also during my time in school studied French, German and Spanish. Though not enough to be able to translate. I might be able to get my hands on a large beer abroad but that's about it (and who needs more than that?).

[IBBoard]

I've got an idea on how data file translation will work, probably based off the existing translation system but on a per-file basis (so each file will contain its own set of translation files). The hard part with file translations might be getting it to change the language for unit names once it has been opened.

As for the French example, I did GCSE (Secondary School) French, but I wasn't sure whether "Sortie" was the right kind of exit. I once tried to be adventurous in one bit of coursework and ended up with the wrong "use" (probably because the English use it strangely in the situation I was using it in anyway!)

[Frostlee]

well, i'm back again.
i have just made a quick translation for the italian, nut unfortunatly cannot test it since beta 3 seems not to read it (and the warfoundrypref.xml too...)!
i'm not sure it is 100% correct but for the 0.1 release it will work

[IBBoard]

Really? That's odd. Mine reads the pref file as it loads a "last used" system (it doesn't save it, so it isn't really "last used", but it would be if it saved it!) and I think it reads the translations. I'll check again tonight for beta 4.

I've created a ticket for translations, so if you attach it here then we'll at least have a record of it. There'll be more translations once ticket 179 is complete, but having the current list will be a start


[edit] *curses Visual Studio* It looks like the stupid thing lost my menu item names again, so the translations won't be working. I'll fix that up for Beta 4.

[Frostlee]

a little add if you'll reone a ticket for that: it seems that there are many repetitions...
for example the sring "create army" appears 3 times... maybe a little more reusability?

[IBBoard]

They're for three different locations (a menu item, a window title and a button) so some people may want them all different. What I could do is add a shortcut to cross-ref them, which might solve the "having to write the same thing multiple times" problem while still giving people freedom.

[Frostlee]

wow. you really follow strictly Stallman's principles about freedom!
no, hey, it was just a joke!
actually the crossreference makes it more complicated than writing it more than once since it's supposed that the traslation file is made only once. so, spending 10 hours for having a crossref to save half hour in translating it's not worth...
by the way, are already all text needed in the file? it is quite small, maybe you have hardcoded some string somewhere?

[IBBoard]

Stallman would probably approve of the use of the AGPL license, but not Mono since Mono is 'evil' for implementing an ISO standard that Microsoft own and which they've given a community patent guarantee for!

As for translations, all I was thinking of was a simple little "#otherID" for the content rather than the text. The translation engine would then read that, fetch the other ID and return that string instead. It might help or it might not, but for short strings I guess it wouldn't make much difference in write-up time.

The translation file isn't for the complete UI yet, though. We've got ticket 179 for me to do that

[Frostlee]

yhea, the 'Mono is evil' is something i've already heard about...
anyway, i think i cannot contest since i'm still using winzozz...

anyway the simpel little #ID could be an interesting compromise.
actually i dont think that the translation is a 'major' issue anyway, if you keep on not using hardcoded string, we could easily add it later on.