Anyone want to take a glance at my translations?

G

GM029

Guest
I'm setting up language choices in my game.

I basically just ran my menu items through Google translation so they are very literal to the English versions. Just checking for anyone who speaks these languages to see if they make sense.

switch (global.language)
{
case 1: // English
{

strStartGame = "Start Game";
strControls = "Controls";
strGameMode = "Game Mode";
strLanguage = "Language";
strExitGame = "Exit Game";

}
break;
case 2: // Spanish
{
strStartGame = "Empezar Juego";
strControls = "Controles";
strGameMode = "Modo de Juego";
strLanguage = "Idioma";
strExitGame = "Salir del Juego";
}
break;
case 3: // French
{
strStartGame = "Démarrer Jeu";
strControls = "Contrôles";
strGameMode = "Mode de Jeu";
strLanguage = "Langue";
strExitGame = "Quitter le Jeu";
}
break;
case 4: // German
{
strStartGame = "Spiel Starten";
strControls = "Kontrollen";
strGameMode = "Spielversion";
strLanguage = "Sprache";
strExitGame = "Spiel Verlassen";
}
break;
case 5: // Portuguese
{
strStartGame = "Começar o Jogo";
strControls = "Controles";
strGameMode = "Modo de Jogo";
strLanguage = "Língua";
strExitGame = "Sair do Jogo";
}
break;
case 6: // Italian
{
strStartGame = "Inizia il Gioco";
strControls = "Controlli";
strGameMode = "Modalità di Gioco";
strLanguage = "Língua";
strExitGame = "Esci dal Gioco";
}
break;
default:
{
strStartGame = "Start Game";
strControls = "Controls";
strGameMode = "Game Mode";
strLanguage = "Language";
strExitGame = "Exit Game";
}
break;
}
 

Rayek

Member
German:
Start Game --> Neues Spiel (optional: same as "New Game") "Spiel Starten" works fine too, though.
Controls --> Steuerung
Game Mode --> Spielmodus
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
I'm setting up language choices in my game.

I basically just ran my menu items through Google translation so they are very literal to the English versions. Just checking for anyone who speaks these languages to see if they make sense.
No. Just don't do this kind of thing. A bad translation will give your players a worse impression than no translation at all, and using machine-translated text blindly will result in gibberish at best and downright insulting content at worst. Machine translations won't cover for things like genuses in latin languages, or different speech patterns and tone based on status (common in japanese) - things like using language completely without honorifics could come off as really rude in japanese, for instance - it's usually translated to people speaking in 50% F-words and 50% their original text in english.

Also, gaming terms often have different translations than the literal translations... Rayek gave you some examples. Trusting literal translations blindly will confuse players with unfamiliar or nonsensical terms. (An example from swedish: the devs translated "Open chest" to "Öppna bröst", i.e., translating "chest" as in the body part, not a treasure chest... and the word is a lot more associated with breasts than the ribcage, making this have very weird connotations, on top of making absolutely no sense since it's completely different from the word for treasure chest.

Recently, the Darkest Dungeon devs did exactly this, and got a major backlash from korean fans disappointed in how the official translation was worse than the incomplete fan translation (which was also made unavailable when the official translation released). You don't want this to happen to your game.

upload_2019-12-22_4-54-1.png

It's worth noting that Red Hook bought a supposedly professional translation from a translation company, but they basically just plugged text into a machine translation tool and gave it back... so be wary of that kind of thing as well, not just machine-translating yourself. A real translator will ask you questions to get as much context as possible.

Everybody knows at least basic english these days, too. Don't go through a massive effort just to make your game less appealing (from the looks of it, you don't have any in-game text).
 

Rayek

Member
Absolutely agree with Yal ! Better to stick with English only, unless your game relies heavily on text and you need to localize it (for example, an adventure game that is aimed at a particular region).

And in those cases you really need a good translator and one that is familiar with that specific area. And after that, have native speaking gamers test your game for issues. Give them the entire text for proofreading, and have them play the game.

We needed to do this with a number of our serious game projects at work.

That said, if your game is meant to be played internationally, and (one of?) your native language(s?) is not English, and your game contains a lot of text: have at least one native English speaker (gamer) proofread your text.
 

Joe Ellis

Member
Unless you know 12 people that speak each language, how are you gonna know that they're translated properly? I'd just use english cus it's the most widely used language and most countries teach it in school
 
G

GM029

Guest
Thanks Rayek!

And thanks to everyone else! Yea my game doesn't have much text in it. It does have some though (outside this menu text) that would def be tricky to translate into a bunch of languages, such as the directions and powerup descriptions. But that's why I started this thread is to maybe get some native speakers to take a look.

Maybe I will ditch my language options then... TBH I asked my friend who speaks Portuguese natively whether 'Game Over' translated literally and he wasn't sure so I guess you can never be sure.

One reason why I'm doing the language list is because I'm not sure whether it leads to a bigger reach on Steam, where I can check off a bunch of languages in my store page area. I figure I'd do the legwork to make the game as accessible as possible. Of course if it's badly translated then that would be a negative.
 
G

GM029

Guest
Another issue I ran into is that the old school 8 bit font that I chose for my game doesn't handle accent marks so I'd have to change the font depending on language selected so yea it's probably a bad idea.
 
D

dannyjenn

Guest
If the game isn't heavy on the text, and you just want to translate the manus and interface and stuff, you could probably just google around and see how other games did it. Phrases such as "Game Over" and "Settings" are common enough.

If the game is going to have a lot of text, you should probably get somebody who actually knows the language to translate it for you. (Preferably a native speaker.)


I would not use a switch statement though. I'd probably use an array or ds_list... store the text in various included files (one for each language) and then switch files and reload the ds_lists depending on which language is selected.


You could probably find some decent font with all the accented characters, or if you're using a bitmap font you could just edit it yourself.
 
You should better do something like this :
This is how i do for my own game : And this work very well ;) :

First, you create a variable global.lang where 0=english, 1=french.... depending on the Os language (then, make an option menu to change it if you want)
Code:
global.lang=real(0);
if os_get_language()=="en" { global.lang=real(0);} //"English"
if os_get_language()=="fr" { global.lang=real(1);} //"Francais"
if os_get_language()=="de" { global.lang=real(2);} //"Deutsch"
if os_get_language()=="es" { global.lang=real(3);} //"Spanisch"
if os_get_language()=="it" { global.lang=real(4);} //"Italienisch"
Then, initialise your text by this way :
Code:
strStartGame[0] = "Start Game";
strStartGame[1] = "Nouvelle partie";
strStartGame[2] = "Spiel Starten";
strStartGame[3] = "Empezar Juego";
strStartGame[4] = "Inizia il Gioco";
So in your game menu, you will just have to call
Code:
draw_text(x,y,strStartGame[real(global.lang)] )
to draw your text on the good language ;)

I'm french and i leave in France, if you want i will correct your translation at the end of your game ;)
Good dev
 
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