Topic: TOOL: Translation Editor - Version 2.0.0 with new layout

[SpeechCenter]

Hello all,

Updated in 2.0.0: Changed layout to display original above the translated line.

Download

While working on translation support for the Speech Center plugin I thought that it may be useful to have an independent tool to edit .trs files. The reasoning to make this independent is to allow game translators to work on the file in a graphical interface, but not requiring game developers to send the entire source or asking translators to learn AGS.

The theme of the tool is keeping things simple. Line numbering in AGS, for example, "&3 Welcome", will by automatically display as "Welcome" and, by
default, the "&3" text will be added automatically to the translated text. Furthermore the program supports infinite undo/redo, copy and find.

Here's a screenshot


Feel free to contact me on any questions or comments.

Have fun!

[Mehrdad]

Great

I appreciate for it
It's really useful for me.I'll try it soon .but i have a question :
Can i see real text translated with new font in front of original text? and can i type right it there?

[SpeechCenter]

Not sure I completely understand the question. You can indeed type the translated text in the grid.
If you wish to set the font, I didn't add that, but if you are referring to a Windows font then that's something I can add. If you are referring to an AGS font that will be very difficult.

Hope I covered your question, but if misunderstood then I'll be happy to answer it if you can clarify.

[tzachs]

Looks great!

Two comments-

1. I can understand that you made it a stand-alone tool so that translators will be able to use it seperately than AGS (which is good), but it shouldn't be too hard to make it a tool and a plugin combined (basically moving the entire code to a dll instead of exe, replacing the form with a control, implementing the plugin interface, and adding an exe that will open a form with the control docked to it).

2. Can you align the Hebrew to the right? 

[SpeechCenter]

Looks great!

Two comments-

1. I can understand that you made it a stand-alone tool so that translators will be able to use it seperately than AGS (which is good), but it shouldn't be too hard to make it a tool and a plugin combined (basically moving the entire code to a dll instead of exe, replacing the form with a control, implementing the plugin interface, and adding an exe that will open a form with the control docked to it).

Yes, I was thinking of making it a plugin, not too difficult. The first thing I'm planning is to add in-place editing for translations in Speech Center plugin. Which means that you can view the speech lines and edit the translations in that context. It won't cover some of the translations (the plugin doesn't cover GUI elements at the moment, although that can change). If I add the second plugin I'll have to make sure the plugins lock the file for write before editing, but that's not too difficult either. However, there may be some less trivial aspects of refreshing the data, I'll have to cover some use cases here to prevent potential data loss. So for the start I'll give editing option in the existing plugin and then start handling the rest. Speech Center plugin still doesn't have in-place editing for scripts and dialogs, that's more difficult because AGS editor doesn't lock the objects or exposes an interface to the plugin to query which files are open, but translation editing is a step towards that goal.

2. Can you align the Hebrew to the right? 

Certainly. It wasn't a priority because as far as I know Hebrew and Arabic use in AGS games is uncommon, but knowing someone needs this changes the priority.

[Mehrdad]

Not sure I completely understand the question. You can indeed type the translated text in the grid.
If you wish to set the font, I didn't add that, but if you are referring to a Windows font then that's something I can add. If you are referring to an AGS font that will be very difficult.

Hope I covered your question, but if misunderstood then I'll be happy to answer it if you can clarify.

Oh yes.your answer was exactly my question.i want change font in translating column for see real texts.because i made a special font(ttf).is it possible?

 

[SpeechCenter]

Not sure I completely understand the question. You can indeed type the translated text in the grid.
If you wish to set the font, I didn't add that, but if you are referring to a Windows font then that's something I can add. If you are referring to an AGS font that will be very difficult.

Hope I covered your question, but if misunderstood then I'll be happy to answer it if you can clarify.

Oh yes.your answer was exactly my question.i want change font in translating column for see real texts.because i made a special font(ttf).is it possible?

 

Yes, I'll add it to the next release.

[Ghost]

Tried it out, briefly, and it looks pretty solid and useful. Thanks a lot for sharing!

[SpeechCenter]

Following your requests, here's a new release which includes:

• Right-to-left support
• Ability to choose the translated column font

Hope it helps!

[Mehrdad]

Thanks a lot for ability choose font.Its really useful but only problem is that texts is very small and i cant see good my texts.is it possible you add font size in new version?(at least 2X or 3X size)

[SpeechCenter]

Done, uploaded version 1.1.1
It was a quick change, so there are the standard sizes available. I may provide option to input the size as text as soon as I find the time.

[Mehrdad]

I appreciate for it.Its really easy for make translate.

[Abisso]

Thank you SpeechCenter for a neat and useful program.

The automatic insertion of the speech metacode at the start of a line is something I truly appreciated, although the ability to choose if the editor should do that or not might be a wiser choice. There can be situations where the game-maker doesn't want the speech to be played on some translations, or on some specific lines of a translation.

I also spotted an undesirable behaviour by the way:

if you have lines starting or ending with extra "spaces", the spaces are not visualized in the editor. I know this might look like a non-problem, but there are multiple reasons for having extra "spaces" and wanting the translator to preserve them in his / her translation.

Other than that, I'd suggest adding an option to re-organize the display of lines by alternating original ones to translation ones (more or less like in the original .trs file). Having them one after another is really helpful to keep the line length similar (which sometimes is imperative) and I don't see any particular advantage in the side by side placement.
Another useful feature would be the option to add / remove the speech metacode (&xxxx) to all the appropriate lines with a simple command / button.
And of course, find / replace could also be precious to all those who use special SCI fonts with foreign characters in place of useless ones.

Still, a really nice tool overall.

[SpeechCenter]

Glad to be of assistance and thanks for the comments, they are useful and I think these are very valid points.

There are currently other unrelated matters occupying my time, but I'll probably be able to get to it in a few weeks and then address as much as possible.

[Rulaman]

There's a similar tool called AGSLinguist

Link of the thread: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=33293.msg431451#msg431451

Downloadlink: http://www.maniac-mansion-mania.com/index.php/de/ressourcen/tools/666-ags-linguist.html

[SpeechCenter]

Hi All,

The changes took a bit longer than I thought, but the new version with new layout is up.
Also added an option (global and per line) to choose whether the number in the original line is included in the translated line.

The link remains the same, available here or in the original post.

Enjoy.

[Monsieur OUXX]

Does this, in a way or another, also handle the proofreading of the Strings in the native language? (e.g. English).

[SpeechCenter]

Not yet, working on solving this actually, but probably makes more sense in the plugin than in the context of this tool, since the original line is a key in AGS when it loads the .trs file.

It might take a bit of time since I'm juggling different things, but I'll do my best to bring it in as soon as possible.

[Abisso]

Thanks for the updates, SpeechCenter. I didn't have time to test anything and I won't sooner than a week from now, but I really look forward to being able to use this tool.

As per the native language proofreading, there's a simple workaround to this, which I'm sure most people could have come up with by themselves, but I'll suggest all the same: creating a <Native Language> translation file and let a proofreader rework only the necessary lines. Then, to prevent the player from using the Default language, simply put something like this:

if (!IsTranslationAvailable()) //if the player is not using a translation it means he's using the Default Game language
    Game.ChangeTranslation("<Native Language>"); //force him to use the <Native Language> translation instead.

in game_start().

It's a workaround, but really simple and not particularly inelegant, in my opinion. It works in AGS 3.1.2 SP1, but I'm sure equivalent functions exist also in other versions.

P.S. Though its name is misleading, IsTranslationAvailable() actually checks if a translation is being used or not, returning 1 or 0 respectively.