Translation: About words and their meaning

[Buginator]

See also Translation.

Note: Contrary to former instructions, please announce working on a translation in viewtopic.php?t=4418 and only open a ticket to attach a file you want committed.

NOTE: all off topic posts will be moved/deleted.

[Zarel]

Can we regenerate a .po file to use as a base?

Each time I add a _("string"), I wonder how translations are going to work. There's a shell script to search the code for _() and stick those in a .po file, but I don't know if it's been run for a long time, or exactly what it does (whether it creates a "template" .po file or adds to existing .po files), etc. We should really coordinate our translators with whenever we add new strings that need translation. Or even just something less convoluted than .po files.

[Crushy]

Is there a better way to do this than constantly editing .po files? I noticed after extensive playing that some of the translating work I did was not consistent in some cases after extensive play. Also, the portuguese translation that I created seems to be coded in ASCII Extended in trunk for some reason...

[cybersphinx]

Is there a better way to do this than constantly editing .po files? I noticed after extensive playing that some of the translating work I did was not consistent in some cases after extensive play.

What would be a better way? You have to edit something, why not .po files?

Also, the portuguese translation that I created seems to be coded in ASCII Extended in trunk for some reason...

I just copied the file you attached to the ticket, and it seemed to be valid UTF8... will have a look.

[Crushy]

Well it's not THAT much of a hassle but I think the project could benefit from something like launchpad translations. I think it automates the translation process completely so no mucking about posting tickets every time a string changes and hoping a dev will look and place it in the next version of warzone.

[cybersphinx]

Well it's not THAT much of a hassle but I think the project could benefit from something like launchpad translations. I think it automates the translation process completely so no mucking about posting tickets every time a string changes and hoping a dev will look and place it in the next version of warzone.

IIRC when launchpad was an option, even less developers looked at it than at the tickets... And afaics what launchpad automates is only the translators' side, while it's more work on the developers' side (i.e. translations have to be fetched from launchpad manually and then applied).

[Crushy]

Oh, sorry. Having never used it for my projects I had no idea how it worked for you guys on the other side

[cybersphinx]

Is there a better way to do this than constantly editing .po files?

Maybe pootle could help there. The question is if Kamaze wants to run it on his server, CPU usage might be a problem there... But it seems to solve all the problems of Launchpad.

[qwerty800]

Things to remember, the total string length cannot exceed 60 characters (at this time)! If it does, it will be cut off.
If we were to increase that, it would break savegames.

For example, "VTOL Hyper Velocity Cannon Retaliation VTOL" is 43 characters. If your translation of that is above 60, then it gets cut off.

Are you serious?
You mean that THE COMPLETE NAME OF THE VEICULE is saved WITHIN THE FILE?

What a complete waste of space!

Can't use IDs instead?

I mean, look at this exemple!

I have a vehicule with the IDs W34-B4-P1
W34 is a Heavy Cannon
B4 is a Bug Body
P1 is a wheeled propulsion

The translation string says to place strings in this specific order: %B-%W sur %P (french pattern)
It also says that W34 here is named "Cannon Lourd", B4 is named "Guêpe" and P1 is named "Roues"

Reconstitution with syntax: "Guêpe-Cannon Lourd sur Roues"

All of this with only 7 bytes used!
And we could go even farther, by removing the letter that identify the part, assume that they are saved in a specific order, and thus taking only 3bytes per vehicle!

That sure is better than the 43 characters used by the "VTOL Hyper Velocity Cannon Retaliation"!

[Per]

You can name designs whatever you want.

[Zarel]

I dunno, it might clean up names.txt if we autogenerated names for AI units, instead of listing them all. The effort going into naming/translating AI templates is really kind of pointless, when users practically never see them, and they can easily be autogenerated.

[cybersphinx]

I'd like to change the translation process, so that someone starting a translation announces it in a forum thread, and opens a ticket only when the file should be applied to SVN. Since we use the tickets basically as a list of tasks to be done, it is somewhat annoying to have open tickets that have to be kept open.

[cybersphinx]

Since nobody commented, I've updated the instructions. Please post in viewtopic.php?t=4418 when you start working on a translation, attach to a ticket when done.

[Zarel]

Oh, erm, I forgot to comment. I'd prefer to keep it in the bugtracker - we already have a "task"/"to-do" ticket type for it...

[urgood2]

A question: in game, does "feat" mean "feature" or "something hard to accomplish"?

Thanks