Multilingual localizations

[Inogord]

I think should make a choice of language in game. I mean choice of full localizations, menus, weapons, maps, tips, tricks...

And for this, in the configs menus, weapons, etc. replaced by variables. And to create the folder with locations's text's files. One file - one language.
File names can be written in their own language, but they can cause problems and therefore probably better use only standard abbreviations Latin alphabet: en, fr, ru, ...

Example:
text (no bin, no hex...) file: "en"

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

main_menu_1="Profile"
main_menu_2="Play Online"
...
main_menu_7="Quit"

profile_menu_1="name"
...

weapon_1= "sword"
weapon_2= "pistol"


Сan use numbers or/and letters instead of words (mean_menu, profile_menu ===> 1,2 or a,b...(1_1="Profile", 2-1="name", 3.2="pistol", c.1=''sword, 1_b="Play Online"')), but then would not be convenient.

[hulk]

I don't really think a localization is necessary. I'm not a native English-speaker and it's not hard at all to understand the menu settings. Other than that, there is the chat which can't be translated anyway. So you have to speak a little English anyway to be able to communicate on most servers. I asssume that most people who play RE are at least 16-18 years old, (probably not i'm afraid) and at that point you should have learned everything in school to understand and communicate in english, in most cases.

[Inogord]

IMHO Red Eclipse - a good and quality game, so she needs it.

[Evropi]

I've been in the OSS translation field since forever. Click here to see my credentials.

Text files are a terrible thing to work with. You should use .po or XLIFF files. There are specialised editors for these file formats like the excellent Virtaal, You should also provide a centralised web repository (must be centralised, can't be distributed/team-oriented) like Transifex.

[Inogord]

Evropi, You're too complicated.
Your way will require more time, labor, etc.

And my way - simple, fast, efficient and reliable.

[ballist1c]

Evropi, You're too complicated.
Your way will require more time, labor, etc.

And my way - simple, fast, efficient and reliable.

No, you should listen to him.

[arand]

I agree with Evropi on that .po files would be a good way to do the translation format, even though it may require more setup, it's much better in the long term. And translations greatly benefit from doing it according to some form of standard, since it's much more accessible to attract translators.

That being said, there's merit to the people who has actually done translations for RE (Sinma, and... anyone else?) rather than sitting around arguing about the format and structure

I know there's a bunch of online translation sites, (based on .po files), launchpad is fairly popular as well (for translations, popular is nice).
Evropi, what's the difference between distributed and centralized in this regard... in comparison to source control systems?

[Evropi]

Actually, the reason I thought having such a system is better is because a web interface is extremely accessible to everyone eager to have the game in their own language. Gettext is relatively simple to edit just through a text editor (certainly more so than XLIFF) and well-supported (read: easy to implement and with many resources to help you).

By distributed, I meant an interface similar to the one used at the DuckDuckGo Community site (a mostly open-source privacy-aware search engine business). I was not using the terminology related to Version Control Systems. This interface makes translators vote for each translation that is proposed by others. This mostly leads to low-quality translations.

Launchpad has a terrible translation interface, IMO. It is also a hassle to use Launchpad in general due to its strict password requirements and so on. The best web interface is probably Transifex's due to being compact and allowing you to both easily filter and search other tokens in both the original and the target language. A good search capability helps translators keep their translations consistent (which is the first rule of software translation).

PS: If a translation system is indeed implemented, the changes should definitely be backported to the Cube Engine.

[Inogord]

Mode and mutator names + descriptions unfortunately cannot be changed without venturing deep into the files of Red Eclipse(gamemode.h, game.cpp), and doing so would require a recompile

viewtopic.php?f=72&t=3701

[Calinou]

I agree with Evropi on that .po files would be a good way to do the translation format, even though it may require more setup, it's much better in the long term. And translations greatly benefit from doing it according to some form of standard, since it's much more accessible to attract translators.

That being said, there's merit to the people who has actually done translations for RE (Sinma, and... anyone else?) rather than sitting around arguing about the format and structure

I know there's a bunch of online translation sites, (based on .po files), launchpad is fairly popular as well (for translations, popular is nice).
Evropi, what's the difference between distributed and centralized in this regard... in comparison to source control systems?

The menus can (and should) be translated with a different menus.cfg. The "strings" such as frag messages/centerprints could be translated using .po files, but this is not possible currently.