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Aug 14, 2009
16
0
Hi lads, I have to say, it is a GREAT game and I love it. But I want some friends of mine to love it too, so I want to translate the game into my own language. How do I do that? Which files contain in game text? Which files should I modify?
 
I tried translating at least a part of it into Polish but I run into a problem with our native characters like ąśćżźółę. Translated text is displayed only until one of those characters appears and that's it. The game cuts the first native character it encounters and the whole text after it.

Any idea which encoding I should use in the _strings.txt file so the game doesn't mind those Polish characters and displays the whole text?
 
Thanks Samppa:)

I was about to ask the same thing delra :) there are some special characters in Turkish too, and they cause problems. I think it is about the font, but how can we add special characters to game font? Or how can we change it to some font that contain special characters?
 
The font I believe is Times New Roman and it contains all the Polish characters already. I know since I use it in Word on daily basis. So it should be fine as long as the file is encoded correctly...
 
UTF-8 encoding should work. Fonts are specified in Data/Locales/en/_lang_defines.txt, but I'd try to experiment with encoding first.

There may be some troublesome places such as sea names so better to try first with some basic GUI dialogs etc.
 
Thanks Samppa!

I figured it out. At least for Polish characters and commander skills. It's about encoding, neither Word, Wordpad or Notepad could save the file correctly so I used Vim from vim.org, set it to UTF-8 and translated in there (basics: press "A" to write, press escape and type :set encoding=utf-8 to change encoding, press escape and type :wq to save).

Here's a proof it works:

zdobywca.jpg


Also, if I translate the whole thing, is there a chance it will make its way into one of future patches? :)
 
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Well, actually Notepad is pretty successful saving the file in UTF-8. It already saves in UTF-8 in default. At least my notepad does:)

working.jpg


See?

Anyway thanks Samppa, Turkish characters are working too, I have 2 finals next week (summer school) but I am going to translate it anyway:D
 
O delra polak ile ty sie angielskiego uczyłeś :) na obczyźnie żyjesz :p ? Dobrze mieć kogoś takiego jak ty tutaj a i mogę trochę pomóc w tłumaczeniu ale nie za dużo bo niestety mój angielski jest na poziomie 1 klasy liceum ;(. Ok sorry guys for polish but I wanted say something :).
 
Yeah, that's what he said. Google translate?

Anyway, it goes pretty smoothly. I already translated the whole geography (sea names are fine, Polish characters are displayed as bold in that weird font of theirs but it's minor annoyance, same goes for window headings btw and I think I will simply switch to those to Times New Roman to avoid trouble), most of city interface (still looking for a good short word to describe Trading Post, "Placówka Handlowa" is like two times too long, I think about "Przystań" which means wharf/mooring so not the same but close enough), most of strategic level interface (It's spread all over the file so it's hard to do it in one go), a big part of the ledger (everything except diplomacy which is huuuuuuuuuuuge), the whole trading part with goods and prices (pound sign is problematic, watch out for this one) and also a huge chunk of battle screen (not much writing there). I also haven't touched mission descriptions and tutorials at all. I translated all ship names except Xebec and East Indiaman and the whole fleets/shipyard/docks management thing.

Sometimes there isn't enough space to put in what I would like to put (for example try squeezing "Wyspy Zielonego Przylądka" into "Cape Verde" space or "Święte Cesarstwo Rzymskie Narodu Niemieckiego" in "Holy Roman Empire" space). It shows the interface was designed in English which is short and concise.

If your language isn't like that (for example Polish) you really will have to struggle in some places. Most notably names of cities, window headings and tabs in the city interface. Other than that, it's a blitz.

Translating this game is even easier than playing it. :)
 
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Nice to hear you both got it working. :cool:

About the lack of space for longish translations; Data/Locales/en/ folder is full of gui files which define different windows and their elements. From these files it's possible to make some buttons/windows/textboxes/etc bigger to make more room for text. But it can be tricky.
 
Yeah, I saw those files and I will have some fun with them at a later stage if I really can't cope with squeezing something in.

At this point I'm more interested how to publish my work. Do I just attach _string.txt file here and tell people to overwrite their Data/Locales/en/ file or is there any better system for that?

My game is English only so I don't have de/ or fr/ dirs to compare how it was done there...
 
Yeah, that's what he said. Google translate?

Anyway, it goes pretty smoothly. I already translated the whole geography (sea names are fine, Polish characters are displayed as bold in that weird font of theirs but it's minor annoyance, same goes for window headings btw and I think I will simply switch to those to Times New Roman to avoid trouble), most of city interface (still looking for a good short word to describe Trading Post, "Placówka Handlowa" is like two times too long, I think about "Przystań" which means wharf/mooring so not the same but close enough), most of strategic level interface (It's spread all over the file so it's hard to do it in one go), a big part of the ledger (everything except diplomacy which is huuuuuuuuuuuge), the whole trading part with goods and prices (pound sign is problematic, watch out for this one) and also a huge chunk of battle screen (not much writing there). I also haven't touched mission descriptions and tutorials at all. I translated all ship names except Xebec and East Indiaman and the whole fleets/shipyard/docks management thing.

Sometimes there isn't enough space to put in what I would like to put (for example try squeezing "Wyspy Zielonego Przylądka" into "Cape Verde" space or "Święte Cesarstwo Rzymskie Narodu Niemieckiego" in "Holy Roman Empire" space). It shows the interface was designed in English which is short and concise.

If your language isn't like that (for example Polish) you really will have to struggle in some places. Most notably names of cities, window headings and tabs in the city interface. Other than that, it's a blitz.

Translating this game is even easier than playing it. :)

No, Google doesn't translate Polish, but I found another website:)

Things are going smoothly for me too. I don't have that fitting problem, if Turkish translate doesn't fit, I replace it with another old Turkish word, which fits perfectly. Only problem is ship names, my naval knowledge is limited, so I can't translate Brig, Frigate, Cutter and Flute into Turkish. But I am going to ask a friend of mine, who is a lieutenant at Naval War School.

I think it will be ready in a week..