New Horizons(ver 14.0920) Translation Project

Добавлено: Пт Ноя 14, 2014 15:48     Заголовок сообщения:


Something to look forward to then. Oh well, one step at a time. Maybe the dialogs are easier to translate? We'll see...

Добавлено: Пт Ноя 14, 2014 15:51     Заголовок сообщения:


In English, a "squire" is the person who carries the shield/armor, like a caddy in Golf. They don't fight.
As for Esquire, check the link, I didn't make it up.

Добавлено: Пт Ноя 14, 2014 15:53     Заголовок сообщения:


Yes, I already had a quick look in there, thinking to just grab the images, but they were not substituted for the Russian ones, as these were still in their original places (8/9/10 Interface.dat and 229-232 Buttons.dat). I assume they must have added them to the dat-file under new numbers and rerouted the calls to the new numbers. Anyway, I'll have a look at this later...

Добавлено: Пт Ноя 14, 2014 15:55     Заголовок сообщения:


A squire was more like an apprentice, not just a caddy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esquire

Добавлено: Пт Ноя 14, 2014 16:15     Заголовок сообщения:


The description states that "As a reward, particularly distinguished guards are often awarded a title of nobility, which is usually attached to a small plot of land."
Wiki says "Later, a village leader or a lord of the manor might be called a squire". If Wiki says it, I accept it

Добавлено: Пт Ноя 14, 2014 23:41     Заголовок сообщения:

Now doing this one:

257. Стальной голем
#Похоже, что эта разработка гномов основана на технологиях Древних, лишний раз доказывая техническую изобретательность подгорных жителей. Благодаря длинным ногам они решают извечную проблему гномов - медлительность. Адаптированные для передвижения по холмам, проворные и стремительные - они всегда в авангарде армии гномов. Лишь старшим конструкторам доверен секрет сборки этих небольших металлических големов. Напоминающие пауков создания достаточно прочны, а высокая скорость и острые мифрильные клешни превращают их в настоящий кошмар для любого стрелка. Будучи практически неуязвимыми для стрел, механические «пауки», как и все конструкты, пасуют перед магией. Опытный конструктор способен создать необычайно прочного и быстрого паука.#

There seems to be a lot of redundancy in this description about the fact that they are fast and strong. Does it flow better in Russian?
Also, I wouldn't call that unit "Steel Golem" but something like "Mechanical Spider".

Добавлено: Сб Ноя 15, 2014 0:15     Заголовок сообщения:

Добавлено: Сб Ноя 15, 2014 20:12     Заголовок сообщения:

A brief update: now down to the last two var files, dialog.var and campaign_dialog.var, but these might take me a while. Still, it's quite amazing how fast I could process the other var files. Just to give you an idea:

All texts get divided into separate segments, and stored as such in the Translation Memory. The segments are cut at full stops and colons. This means that once a variable name like "Stamina:" or "GoldCost:" is stored, every occurance thereafter, from the other occurances in the same document to future ones in future versions of these files, is translated automatically. And this also applies to the values, and it's even smarter with those.

Once the TM knows that 0 is translated as 0, it also knows that 347 is translated as 347. And not only that, once it knows that (0, 0; 0, 0; 0,0; 0, 0) or 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 is left as is in the translation, it will also leave (65, 347; 15, 231; 89, 24; 2, 67) or 23,45,76,25,854,34,97,46,28,83,93,102 exactly as it is, which means that if in the next version of New Horizons, some units, items or spells are tweaked or balanced and their parameters changed, the TM will still automatically translate all of those entries with the changed values. So next time it's really only the new texts and terms that will have to be properly translated.

Most of the time I have spent these past two weeks was setting up the system, creating the databases, figuring out the character encoding issues, and a lot of other small things I had to figure out and implement. Next time, the English localization of a new version will go much much faster, still some processing, but mostly only the "real" translation work. And if that would be anticipated by those of you who have the skill, that is creating English names and descriptions at the same time as you create the Russian ones, then it would indeed be possible to release an English version almost simultaneously with the Russian one.

Due to the way the TM works and spots similarities or the lack thereof, I have discovered some irregularities in the variable names of unit.var and item.var. I'd like to list them here, possibly for you to check if it has lead or will lead to bugs. If so, they exist in the Russian version of the game as well, and will then need to be corrected:

unit.var:
83 - Wolf: variable name Cannibalise is spelled in all other cases as Cannibalize
86 - Veteran Spearman: the parameter pairs under Lvl 2 upg are not all separated by ; but there's a , in there in the wrong place
88 - Mercenary has listed the variable Poison_Shoot while 112 - Bandit uses Poison_Shot. If this truly is a variable, shouldn't one or the other be used?
101 - Ballista of the Ancients: Gather Ammo is missing a _. I would think this matters, doesn't it?

item.var:
333 - Diamond Bracelet: a variable is called Rangedefence rather than RangedDefence. Is that okay?
397 - Winged Chainmail: a variable is called Hil Dweller rather than HillDweller.
402 - Scales of Chassath: a variable is called Poison Strike rather than PoisonStrike or Poison_Strike.
479 - Dariol's Longbow: a variable is called Stuning_Shot, rather than Stunning_Shot.

Maybe the above issues are no problem at all, but I think it can't hurt to bring it up. Please comment, so I can also make any necessary changes in the English version.

Добавлено: Сб Ноя 15, 2014 22:16     Заголовок сообщения:


I see 6 units pointing to upgrade 79 (Necrophagy)

Perhaps the text is ignored by the game engine? (It might be just a helpful hint for modders?)


Lvl 02 upgrades: (30, 4; 20, 4, 627, 3)
Good catch, that one might be a bug; unless the game engine just parses the numbers, whatever the separator.

I'd be interested to hear what the original modders have to say.

Regards.

Добавлено: Сб Ноя 15, 2014 23:01     Заголовок сообщения:

This one is indeed a bug, it was reported and fixed in beta build. You can fix it for the release as well. Do not mind the others. Those strings before a number are more of comments than variables names. There must be a colon, a whitespace and a number, the number being the actual variable. And if "Abilityes" did not ring a bell, I can assure you, that those comments were written almost exclusively by men possessing extensive lack of knowledge of English. They are bound to be confusing and inconsistent, if not outright misleading.
_________________
Phenomenal self as such is not an epistemically justified form of mental content.

Добавлено: Вс Ноя 16, 2014 0:23     Заголовок сообщения:


Okay, I understand, and yes, I did take note of the Abilityes and the Thieft and so forth. but at least those were consistently used, so I left those in place. I was just worried about the inconsistencies, as I didn't know how the files were parsed exactly. So on that topic, if not through the variable names, what then? I'm still wondering about that. Is it by line number? (I cannot imagine that) Or does it look for the item number and then for data beginning (and ending) with a particular character? That info might help me with the debugging that will need to happen in a few days time. My assumption now is that certain characters, like the colon, semi-colon and hash, are the characters that mark the beginnings and endings of the relevant strings. Any further helpful information is very welcome.

Добавлено: Вс Ноя 16, 2014 17:46     Заголовок сообщения:


Same problem with unit /182
Lvl 05 upgrades: (641, 4, 652, 4)

Добавлено: Пн Ноя 17, 2014 1:29     Заголовок сообщения:

Daily update: I spent all day processing campaign_dialog.var, all 18358 sentences and 70810 words of it. Even though only a handful of real new sentences, or parts thereof, were added since 13.0421, it still took me quite a while to reach the end.

It seems that at some point the whole text was revised and many sentences improved, even with as little as a comma here or a dash there. Even the tiniest of changes are flagged by the TM and presented to me as a 99% match. I could make it easy on myself and just press enter with these, but that would mean that also all the old sentences would remain stored in the TM, and since they will never be needed in that particular form again, they would just clutter the database. So I took the trouble to take some additional steps each time, to delete them from the TM and only store the new versions.

Then there were all the sentences that had words like Shards, Ancients, Keys, etc. capitalized compared to 13.0421, so the same thing, but with the added job of making sure these words are also capitalized in English. In some cases they already were, mostly the Ancients, but most Keys and some Shards needed to be modified.

And then there were still some alignment issues to resolve, due to sentence pairs not matching up properly, mainly because 2 sentences in Russian were at times translated as 1 sentence in English, or vice versa.

All in all, a productive and satisfying day!

Before I start on the huge dialog.var tomorrow, I just remembered that there's also a Diplomacy folder within the Text folder. I had completely forgotten about that. I think all the player files are quite similar though, so that shouldn't take me too long.

I'm eager to finish with the files and start debugging and playing a bit. I'm really curious if all will work as it should, and if not, how easy it will be to make it work.

Добавлено: Пн Ноя 17, 2014 1:38     Заголовок сообщения:


NH didn't change any file in the Diplomacy folder. So you can just pick up the translated files from the English version. (Unless you intend to improve the translations?)

Also, could you post your var folder? I want to look for any (obvious) syntax errors.

Regards.

Добавлено: Пн Ноя 17, 2014 2:00     Заголовок сообщения:


I had already started and, as with campaign_dialog.var, decided to also translate the remarks that start with /. I know this isn't necessary, but it was and is just one extra bit of work while going through the files. At least it makes debugging a bit easier now for an English speaker.


I'm sorry, but I'm not ready yet to share any of the files. I haven't even started debugging myself. If I do hit a wall with a file at some point and can't seem to find a solution, I will definitely ask for help, but for now I just want to finish the translation work, which has been quite intense and full on for the past weeks, and finally get a chance to see for myself first if it works, and play around a bit with all those units I saw passing in front of my eyes.

Добавлено: Вт Ноя 18, 2014 23:30     Заголовок сообщения:

I spent the two days since my last update working hard on dialog.var. It's been slow going, and I have only just reached the low 1900's. FYI, There are 2372 dialogs, containing 32,407 sentences with 104,427 words. There were only a couple of really new lines in the old bit up to 1900, some of which I translated and some I skipped. Despite going through all the "old" material, it took almost 2 full days to get this far. Mostly I had the same chores to do as with campaign_dialog, with the additional challenge of encountering quite a few cases where different English translations exist for the same Russian expression. This will then come up forever as a 99% match, unless at that point I choose only one version, which I have done. This all takes time. And there were other things I won't go into the details of...

Now I've reached the part with the new lines, as Boon already announced, still about 400 dialogs, so tomorrow I will do the same as I did with unit.txt, place the larger and more difficult dialogs and sentences to be translated into the work sheet, so others could work on it. Please feel free to PM me for the link!

I do realize that not everyone has as much time as I currently have, but even if for now I would just do a very quick improvement of all the texts that have been automatically translated by Google, that would be enough to at least create text that can be understood by the player. Then possibly later, after a version has been released, and some of you do have the time, you could work on it in the sheet, and I could just slowly implement these higher quality translations into the TM, and make incremental English language updates.

Since Drakon ended at 1.5, I think this one should be called 2.0, with later 0.1 increments signifying language and bug fix updates, and going to 3.0 with the next NH version.

To summarize, tomorrow I'll start going through the remaining 400 or so dialogs, translating small and/or easy sentences as I go along, and placing the larger and/or more difficult ones in the spreadsheet in their own tab. Once I'm through, I can start debugging, because at least I'll have the very bad Google translations in their proper places, and they will work too, for testing.

Then, as soon as the game works, I'll start on the remaining Google translations and just do a "quickie" on those, making sure all the proper game names and terms are used, putting the sentences in a form that people can understand and making sure they're at least grammatically correct, if not exactly prosaic.

Добавлено: Ср Ноя 19, 2014 22:19     Заголовок сообщения:

I've done quite a few real translations today. I've put 22 dialogs or parts thereof on the working sheet. The early ones are still kind of random, some of them may be relatively easy, but as the work progressed today, I decided to do as much as I could on the spot, so if the gist of a particular dialog was reasonably clear, I just translated it. Considering I only put 22 dialogs on the sheet and I managed to reach number 2112 today, I think I did a good job and made some good headway. Auspicious number that, by the way, 2112, my very first Rush album!

That's of course one of the main advantages of working with CAT-software, any sentence that has a similarity of 70% or higher, compared to a sentence that has already been translated, will then be much easier to translate. Take a sentence like: "The leader of the Elven warriors speaks:". The same sentence occurs multiple times, albeit with different races, so all I need to do in that case is replace one word, the meaning of which I can easily see in the termbase or the TM. Of course it's not always that easy, but all of the work I've done for the last few weeks would have taken months without the translation software. So it's slow going, but still much faster than doing it just from within the actual files. And the dialogs, dealing with encounters and quests, etc, are easier to understand and get right than the history and lore of the units.

Anyway, I need to stop for the day, but will continue tomorrow. From now on, I will do as much of the translations as I can myself, from within the software directly, so it would be really great if some of you could at least deal with the more difficult bits I placed in the spreadsheet.

Добавлено: Чт Ноя 20, 2014 0:53     Заголовок сообщения:


It's great to read about your progress. Looking forward to play the game on Christmas break.

Since you didn't want to share your var files (hint, hint) I've taken on a side project of writing a syntax checker for var files. That way, for every new release of NH, syntax errors like the 2 in unit.var can be spotted immediately.

Regards.

Добавлено: Пт Ноя 21, 2014 0:35     Заголовок сообщения:

I reached dialog 2309 just now, having worked the whole day. Still 63 more to do. Only added 8 more to the working sheet, making it a total of 30 still to be translated there. Will definitely complete dialog.var tomorrow, so then I can finally do some real testing to see if it all works. I need a wee break from all those words!

When everything is as it should be, I'll do a quick job with the remaining translations on the worksheet, as these can always be improved and polished by others at a later time. I guess that will still take me a day or two.

I'm almost done with the 2nd animation of the English menu text. I managed to replace the delete buttons and have updated the credits.

Just to think ahead a bit: what files are supposed to be included in a NH release? I assume it should only include the files that are different from the vanilla version. Maybe it would be better to ask: what files should be excluded from a release?

Добавлено: Пт Ноя 21, 2014 11:19     Заголовок сообщения:


What did you have in mind for distribution?
AFAICT, the only files that didn't change are a pair of DLLs, and maybe the font files.
IMHO, the most convenient solution for users is to provide a self-sufficient compressed archive (which can be expanded anywhere, no installer required).
Regards.