FreeGameDev

Hello guys, as I've promised I've started translating the game into russian. There are some questions though:

1) I'm not sure I should translate key strings (euro, up, down, ctrl, etc)

2) there are some string like "up (in menu)". Should they be translated like this? I mean "вверх (в меню)" would be a direct translation of this string.

3) Do I have some time before 0.4 release? I'd like to verify all translated strings look and sound good ingame.

Hello KroArtem,

KroArtem {l Wrote}:Hello guys, as I've promised I've started translating the game into russian.

That's great news, we really appreciate it.

KroArtem {l Wrote}:1) I'm not sure I should translate key strings (euro, up, down, ctrl, etc)

That depends on how they are called in Russian, are those keys present on a Russian keyboard?
I think it's best to translate them in a way that the user will directly understand which key it is.
So for example if there's a different/'proper' name for the control key, but everyone calls it control then stick with that.

KroArtem {l Wrote}:2) there are some string like "up (in menu)". Should they be translated like this? I mean "вверх (в меню)" would be a direct translation of this string.

Well I'm not sure if the Russian translation is correct, since my Russian isn't that great.
You should make sure that 'up' is translated in a word that means up in the sense of navigating through a gui.
An example for this would be the main menu, you can use the arrow keys (or the configured keys) to move 'up' through the options.
The second part, the 'in menu' applies to the location the key can be used/is active, namely in the menu(s)

I hope this answers your question.

KroArtem {l Wrote}:3) Do I have some time before 0.4 release? I'd like to verify all translated strings look and sound good ingame.

It's hard to tell how much time you've left before V0.4, I'm leaning towards releasing it ASAP (will probably take longer).
But don't worry, there will be a release candidate first in which you can still finish/improve/"bug fix" the translation.

I hope these answers will help, I found it quite hard to answer them.
If you've got more questions, feel free to ask.

P.S. Levelpacks can also be translated.
There is a string freeze, but I think the tutorial levelpack will be changed before V0.4 so it might be best to wait for that.

Hello Edward_Lii,

That depends on how they are called in Russian, are those keys present on a Russian keyboard?
I think it's best to translate them in a way that the user will directly understand which key it is.
So for example if there's a different/'proper' name for the control key, but everyone calls it control then stick with that.

I'm still unsure but I'll probably leave those strings "as is" because we usually have got both russian and english letters, for example:
http://work-rpk.ru/userfiles/images/Las ... board1.jpg

The last (probably) question: does M&MS need additional fonts for Cyrillic letters? It seems so:
http://imgur.com/7VX7a

Hello KroArtem,

KroArtem {l Wrote}:The last (probably) question: does M&MS need additional fonts for Cyrillic letters? It seems so:

Yes, we would need a font that support those characters.
For the Chinese translation we use the DroidSans font.

I'm not sure if that font supports Cyrillic characters, but IIRC it did.
You can change the font without changing the source, there should be a translatable string 'knewave', which should be changed to DroidSansFallback.
And one string 'Blokletters-Viltstift' which should also be changed to DroidSansFallback.

Ok, will check soon and continue working on it Thanks for rapid answers.

Hello KroArtem and thanks for your translation work. When creating translation .po file, make sure that it's encoded with UTF-8.

The main part (menu + editor) is translated, started to translate tutorial.
Here are some things I want to mention:

1.I still don't know how to translate some things like "collectable". I mean, I can't find the right word because "вещь, которую можно собрать" won't have enough space
2.Also I can't set "On" and "Off" for a switcher in editor mode, it always changes to "toggle".
3.The string ERROR: Unable to download addons file! is not translatable.
4.I'm not able to finish 9-th level in the tutorial in 3 seconds (needed for gold medal) :/

Hello KroArtem,

KroArtem {l Wrote}:The main part (menu + editor) is translated, started to translate tutorial.

Great work, I've committed it to svn and it's now in revision 445.

KroArtem {l Wrote}:1.I still don't know how to translate some things like "collectable". I mean, I can't find the right word because "вещь, которую можно собрать" won't have enough space

I'm afraid I can't help you with this problem, but surely there must be something shorter for collectable?
One thing I noticed is that they are still called keys in the tutorial levelpack, this might be a suitable substitute in the translation, if 'key' is short enough in Russian of course.

KroArtem {l Wrote}:2.Also I can't set "On" and "Off" for a switcher in editor mode, it always changes to "toggle".

It works fine for me, do you mean the setting gets set back to 'toggle' when you look at it again?
Or doesn't the behaviour change as you expected?

KroArtem {l Wrote}:3.The string ERROR: Unable to download addons file! is not translatable.

Thanks for pointing this out, it's fixed in svn rev. 445.
Note that the messages.pot isn't updated since it would break the previous made translations and we're in a string freeze after all.

KroArtem {l Wrote}:4.I'm not able to finish 9-th level in the tutorial in 3 seconds (needed for gold medal) :/

Oops, I must have updated that level without adjusting the targets.
I will fix them as soon as possible, thanks for pointing it out.

Hello again,

It works fine for me, do you mean the setting gets set back to 'toggle' when you look at it again?
Or doesn't the behaviour change as you expected?

Yes, I mean its' setting always gets set back to "toggle" when I look at it again. However I haven't read documentation and don't know in what cases this should happen.

One thing I noticed is that they are still called keys in the tutorial levelpack, this might be a suitable substitute in the translation, if 'key' is short enough in Russian of course.

Ah well, the "key" will be much shorter, I'll finish tutorial and update the main .po file then.

Done with the tutorial too. Fixed 'collecable' in the main .po file.
The one that is 15.7 kb is for tutorial. 25.3kb for the game itself.

I'll also submit classic and default levelpack translations today, as they contain only map names.

Translating completed, now time to test it. I've already done it but another's opinion is highy appreciated so I'm going to ask some people from russian forums to test it (after everything is added to svn)

Hello KroArtem,

KroArtem {l Wrote}:Translating completed, now time to test it. I've already done it but another's opinion is highy appreciated so I'm going to ask some people from russian forums to test it (after everything is added to svn)

Thanks, I've committed all of them to svn, it's in revision 446.

KroArtem {l Wrote}:Yes, I mean its' setting always gets set back to "toggle" when I look at it again. However I haven't read documentation and don't know in what cases this should happen.

I don't think there's any documentation (yet) that covers this, but it should stay as configured.
My guess is that it has something to do with translations and that this bug doesn't occur when using the English translation, I will look into this.

Anyway, thanks for the translation.