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Traslation in other languages.

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 1:06 pm
by bugmenot
Hi! I was looking for a topic about traslation. But i never found it. I think its time to start traslation in other laguages. I am offering to traslate english to spanish. If people is interested we can make groups of traslations. For example, taking parts of the scripst (the whole scripst to one person is insane) and traslate in groups.

(sorry for my poor english)

Re: Traslation in other languages.

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 1:22 pm
by Erpy
Right now we're not supporting translations for QFG2 due to the amount of additional scripting and coordination work on our side, our inability to verify the quality of a translation and the fact that likely only a very, very small percentage people will get anywhere near finishing the job.

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Re: Traslation in other languages.

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 5:49 pm
by bugmenot
well if you change your mind... let me know

Re: Traslation in other languages.

Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 11:46 am
by DrJones
But why do you have to apologize for having a poor english when offering to do a translation from that language? Don't you see that it looks awful? I'm spanish, and I do translations for time to time, and it brings me down to tears to see every now and then people offering for a translation job posting SMS-like text, and/or with just a grasp of the source language. :cry

It's not about you, you're polite and trying to be helpful and all. I cry for the devastating panorama on fantranslations. And AGDI has no way to know if the translation is good or dud, that's why they don't accept offerings anymore. I know I wouldn't. :p

Now, I could try and go hacking the game to unofficially translate it, but:

- I have translated games with +14 hours of text before and it's horrible, and it would take a whole year at least. Hacking is slow, dangerous, takes a lot of extra effort, and that's assuming the text is not encrypted at all. I would also have to hack the game fonts to add special characters, redraw graphics and rewrite puns. In some cases, even the puzzles have to be rewritten!
- Then, I would have to proofread many times the whole script, looking for typos, making sentences more natural, and test that the text is displayed correctly and that it looks good in the dialog boxes (that's it, making the text enjoyable to read).
- Once all that is done, I wouldn't still be able to legally distribute the game. I would have to create a dubious patch and tell people to apply it to an executable file (!), but anyways...
- in a year, they'll likely have released a new version fixing bugs, making my patch useless, with the risk of destroying your saves or worse if applied.
- Finally, I would be going against the desires of the AGDI team, which has stated that they can't do translations pack, and they would have a hard case defending that position if mine were dancing around there, even though they don't support it.

So, no. Sorry. Things look easier when looking from the outside, and most people get tired after the first week of work (because then it stop beings fun and it becomes work) :eek

Re: Traslation in other languages.

Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 10:56 pm
by bugmenot
para ser espaƱol dominas muy bien el inglesl :rollin .

My experience (i translate in a subtitler team) show me that team work its very productive. I think if we get some team we can translate the script in one or two moths.

i believe we can do some fine work and if AGDI cannot verify quality... well lets post it like "unnoficial"traslation instead.

about you said... its true. No the first time i have heard. i dont remenber where... but the problems are solved if AGDI cooperates in this point. They send us the scripts, we traslated and we send back.

Re: Traslation in other languages.

Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2008 4:42 am
by Erpy
There's still the issue that QFG2VGA isn't really suitable to support translation packs. A good deal of scripting would be required to turn it into a potential international version and even then the graphics would need to be changed in many places for each localized version.

Also, I'm afraid the "unofficial" option is not an option for us. You need the game source anyhow in order to compile a translation template into a translation patch, so any translation projects would still require our involvement and then we get back to the principle that we can't check if a translation was done well. (which, in QFG2VGA's case, is pretty difficult since quite a few characters, such as Rakeesh, Uhura, Ali Chica, Ali Fakir, Keapon Laffin, Omar and the Katta, have distinct language use)

And releasing a translation template would still end up in many volunteers and few finished results.

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Re: Traslation in other languages.

Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2008 9:28 am
by Gronagor
And besides, QfG has just too many puns which are meant for the english language, and would seem pretty stupid translated to other languages.

PS: None of the people who replied so far in this thread has English as their first language, so don't think it is some pro-english conspiracy.

Simply put: Bad idea.

Re: Traslation in other languages.

Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2008 9:38 am
by DrJones
Erpy wrote:Also, I'm afraid the "unofficial" option is not an option for us. You need the game source anyhow in order to compile a translation template into a translation patch, so any translation projects would still require our involvement and then we get back to the principle that we can't check if a translation was done well. (which, in QFG2VGA's case, is pretty difficult since quite a few characters, such as Rakeesh, Uhura, Ali Chica, Ali Fakir, Keapon Laffin, Omar and the Katta, have distinct language use)
Heh, I was going to talk about that last part, too, but then I thought I was being too much perfectionist and that it wouldn't be an illustrative example. Omar is quite the challenge, but Keapon Laffin's speech is specially troublesome. Fortunately, I bought several books and devised tricks to help me translate puns and poetry. :p

Unofficially means here using an Hex editor, and release a diff file altering blocks of text, pointers to those blocks of text, and if any, CRC Checksums. If there's encryption, that should be bypassed manually too. Also, spanish text is about 25% longer than english text, so to fit the available space you either scrap some text (what most people do), or get creative in the wording so that you say the same with fewer letters. :eek

Anyways, after doing all that low-level work for months, I understood why ROM translators split up the task among many members. :lol

Re: Traslation in other languages.

Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 11:03 am
by bugmenot
i have a great idea about omar. omar has a traslator ok? well, lets traslate the traslators one and dont the omars one. And then stays more real character than the original qof2. :rollin :rollin

Re: Traslation in other languages.

Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 11:53 am
by Erpy
I don't think that idea would maintain the quality of the dialogue or would make for a good translation patch. Omar's poetic answers to the player's queries may be difficult to interpret for a direct meaning (hence Ja'afar being by his side), but they were nevertheless written with care and I personally like reading them. They flow nicely and have a fairly good metrum. It's not like it's random gibberish that makes no sense to outsiders. A translator would have to write his/her own poems from scratch that have similar metrum and a similar message, but were written specifically with the new language in mind. I, for one, would not care to do that in dutch myself. I'm already pretty lame at Saint Nicholas poems. (that's a dutch reference, the rest of the world may ignore that last remark)

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Re: Traslation in other languages.

Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 12:51 pm
by DrJones
Eh, bugmenot, if you are serious take a look at this and tell me how would you translate it.

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Re: Traslation in other languages.

Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 5:51 pm
by MusicallyInspired
If people want to play the game badly enough then they should learn English.

Re: Traslation in other languages.

Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 8:12 am
by Praetorian
Hello all. I'm new to this forum,, and thought I should give you my perspective for this.
But first, I should congratulate the development team for a fantastic work in the QFG2 remake, and ofcourse the two King's Quest remakes before that!!! Excellent work guys. I will be looking forward to your future releases, commercial or not.

As for the translation issue... I myself have participated, in a few translation projects for old classic adventures -and currently still actively participate in one. And I only speak of text/image translation, because we always are in favor of keeping the original speech intact (where available).
I do believe, firmly, that it is always better that one should play a game in its original language, the way it was intented to be played/experienced. And it's a seriously overlooked method of becoming accustomed with a foreign language.
However, a fan translation project should not be viewed as an effort that would possibly ruin the intented quality/atmosphere/experience for the final player. Let me list some of the reasons why:
1) It is developed by fans, and they will go to great lengths to preserve the original feel in every single quote. We are doing it because we love that particular game, we love its individuality, its story, its characters. From my experience, we have always used methods as brainstorming, forum polls, reading literature books pertinent with the game's story, consulting with professional translators, all in the course to provide an optimal translation and as close as possible to the original text.
2) Translation of images also undergoes very careful processing. We try hard to find the same or very simlar fonts, keep the colors and word positioning (where possible) and make our translation seemingly transparent to the player.
3) Localization of a game, will make it accessible to more people, especially among the younger crowd. And also not only amongst people who haven't learned the english language, but even more so people who do understand english, but not that well to understand/feel the game in its full extend.
5) Finally, I personally believe that adventure games need every boost they can get, because sadly in our days they are promptly marginalised by little-to-no-mind-challenging action oriented games.

So that said, we always stick with our projects until they are completed. And even then, we choose to keep the process open to any useful feedback that will come from people who have played the translated game.

What you will choose (or have chosen) to do, is absolutely your decision, and I respect that. I just thought that you should hear my side of it.

Re: Traslation in other languages.

Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 12:34 pm
by Blackthorne519
Y'all should just learn to speak American gooder. I speak it the goodest out of all the people I know, and I got gooder everyday.


Bt

Re: Traslation in other languages.

Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 12:41 pm
by Gronagor
LOL! I don't think anybody could have said it any gooder.

Re: Translation in other languages.

Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2008 12:58 pm
by Paladin
Trial by Fire is a great game and I would love to see it translated, since it would bring the experience to many new players.
Well, a German translation might be possible, since AGD1 could do a quality check afaik ;) .

I do agree that fan translations are sometimes better than those of companies, since they are really doing it for the game/show/movie, not "just" the money. One thing I'll always remember is QfG4, where you could ask Katrina for a date. Well, you can translate date as "Verabredung" (like a rendezvous) or as "Datum" (as used for calendars). Just guess what the translators used ;) . But thanks to John Rhys-Davies there was not even the slightest reason to not play it in English.)

I see three main problems regarding fan based translations for such a big content. Already mentioned would be, that it's hard to find people who stay through the whole process. As well mentioned are the jokes and other language based content like dialects and rhymes. Those can be worked around. I've seen translations where those contents have been replaced by equal or better stuff. The translation team just has to be creative. Best would be that they are creative enough to put in jokes where they can, not just where they are in the original language. This would make the translation more enjoyable, but also more difficult to create.
But I think a very important part is often overlooked by lesser professional translation teams. Consistence. If one translator translates a dagger as "Dolch", the other shouldn't use "Messer". (Just a lame example.) That means that supervisors are necessary, not just project leaders. And to find a good supervisor is the most difficult part, since that person needs stay through the whole project, must be very fluent and experienced in both languages, creative as well, has to organize translators/translations and be demanding for results. On top of that needs a big bunch of spare time. Try to find someone like that... And in the end you still have to do a new "beta testing" phase just for the translations.

As I said, I would love to see a German translation, but am fully aware that it's quite hard to get. I know of no teams out there who could handle such a huge task. Doing subtitles for a show with at few hundred lines cannot be compared to doing a game with a few thousand lines. Then again, I don't know that many translation teams, I've just been doing a bit counseling for one ;) .

Well, if there'll ever be a team that get's the job to do a German translation, you can count me in as well. I don't have a lot of spare time, but I could work a few hours a week on some translations or do counseling for the project. Hey, I owe the old parser based games a lot, since they helped me get an A in English back at school. Especially QfG2, which I played a lot and even formed my personality and character a bit. I'd love to be able to do some supervising as well, but then again, I know my limits. I'm not that sure if I'd be fully capable of doing this and then I have to pay my bills somehow and am working on other projects as well, so there isn't enough time left.