AGS translations

krum110487 · Fri 07/01/2011 06:07:40

Ok, I want to start off by saying, I don't want to rub anyone the wrong way!

I wanted to challenge myself with a task in something I have never done before, so I decided to make a program that can read the compiled .tra files.

I have it nearly fully functional (except non-alpha/Special characters).

I don't want to be disrespectful and release it without permission. I am creating this specifically for translation of games, because it would be nice to have a program that can be used without tracking down the owner and getting the source to the translation. (not sure if a program exists already)

I am not sure how you feel about this topic, and as I wont release it if you are totally against it. I think it would be a great tool for the community to easily translate games!

if you agree to allow me to distribute it, I plan on making a simple column based editor, which will use google translate + other methods to help the translator.

Thank you for your time!

Monsieur OUXX · Fri 07/01/2011 09:17:37

Quote from: krum110487 on Fri 07/01/2011 06:07:40
simple editor, which will use google translate + other methods to help the translator.

Clever and straightforward!

I like the idea.
Now, the only issue is to get the approval of Chris Jones.
Considering the latest evolutions of his strategy regarding the sources of AGS, I guess he won't be hostile to that idea, but of course I can't speak for him.

LupaShiva · Fri 07/01/2011 13:15:56

That would be awesome, i vote yes

Pumaman · Sat 08/01/2011 01:44:19

Please do not do this.

Part of the reason why AGS has a separate compiled translation format is because the feedback from game authors was that they wanted control of translations released for their games.

Imagine that you've spent a lot of time making a high-quality game, and then a random person on the internet creates their own French translation, full of mistakes and possibly profanity, and releases it to the world as a "French translation for the game". The game author would have no control over this, and French people would play it and get a bad experience.

As far as I know, people making games still have this opinion and still want control over who can create translations for their games so that they can review them and control the quality of translations.

Calin Leafshade · Sat 08/01/2011 01:49:19

I'm with CJ.

Small indie games like these dont have the same defenses as big budget ones.

If someone plays a shitty translation of a AAA game they blame the modder because its been released unofficially
however if someone plays a shit translation of an indie game its easy to pass it off as an 'official' version.

Le Woltaire · Sat 08/01/2011 02:07:57

I also say: No!
Do not release it.

I've had many experiences with game translations.
Those who want to translate usually come forward and offer their services by themselves.
Then I can give them the files.
This worked and works perfectly.

Apart from that every good translation needs continous dialog with the game autor.
We even had to build up a complete wiki with character and location descriptions,
where translators could meet and exchange each other...

If you release your thing you will cause a lot of trouble.
Also the first thing that will happen is that somebody makes a joke and creates a radically different translation.
Something like: "Polly wants a joint!" instead of "Polly wants a cracker!" or similar...
Maybe they will even use the dialogs of "Porn Quest" for "Kings Quest"...
It will just cause disgusting confusion.

krum110487 · Sat 08/01/2011 05:00:06

See this is why I wanted to ask, my first thought was to just release it, but I decided to ask instead!

I will not release it as promised, and I am a man of my word!

As for quality control, I completely understand, but the other side of the coin is availability to non-default language speaking people, who want to play the game, but have no choice.

Bad translation or not, I love playing games, I have never played before, this software could be used to have unofficial translations and be distributed separately and optionally.

BUT, as I stated I will not release it, and I will stop development on extracting text from the executable. Thanks for the official word and the quick response!!

:Edit:
Alternatively, I may create a program to translate the translation source files to .po or other great translators, but I kinda just got that idea from another post recently.

Pumaman · Sat 08/01/2011 15:01:23

Thanks for checking with us.

The general opinion that I've heard from most people is that they'd rather play the game with its original English text, than play a bad translation. Obviously that's not an option for people that simply don't speak any English, but in a lot of cases it's better to have no translation than a bad or inaccurate one.

RoliX · Fri 08/07/2011 16:41:37

I think you should think about people who can't understand a single word in english. Because studied other language, or not studied any language at all. I know you all have english as a mother tongue, or speaking english quite enough to enjoy games in original language... But think about those who NEED translation, because they simply cannot play the game without it.

Everything works perfectly, till the authors are "alive". The translator contact the author, the author handle the translation file, etc... BUT I think there're a lot of authors who impossible to contact with nowadays, and you say these games simply "shoudn't be translated". You don't know how many people don't speak english but love to play with this games if they could understand the words. Easy to say "no need bad translation" while you sitting in England, or in the U.S, or just perfectly speaking english.

Just take a look at my situation now: 5 Days a Stranger has hungarian translation. Many hungarians, kids, adults, don't speak english, but wants to play the sequence of this game. I'm trying to contact to the games author for days, but he just don't reply me. I think he has no time, or just "rude", I don't know. It seems I will never have the chance to translate these games, because the author is so "famous" that its impossible to get in touch with him. I'm glad to see that some people thought about these issues in the past, and I'm sad to see that you "officially" refuse any chance to translate a game without the author.

I think the benefits would much more overweight the drawbacks... You just take away a lot of fun from non-english people because of that small possibility of a drawback...

Dataflashsabot · Fri 08/07/2011 19:10:05

Yeah, Yahtzee really hates to be contacted (even before he got famous with ZP).

WHAM · Fri 08/07/2011 23:36:27

If the russians have a right to release their games with no or extremely poor translation (see: Pathologic), then I beliebe everyone else should have that right too.

On a more serious note: if the author of the game wants to make the game available to a wider audience, that is the author's decision. While I am open minded (one of my games was released in 5 languages, and I can only read two of them, so no way to actually check the translations), I would be very angry if people modified without my consent.

As long as I have a right to decide who gets to make the translations, I can at least send them a nasty message if there is negative feedback, but if anyone can do the translations, I lose control over my creation.

Sorry for rambling, but I wanted to give my two cents on this matter.

monkey0506 · Sat 09/07/2011 00:31:33

I agree with the general consensus, and more specifically with what WHAM said.

RoliX, we're not trying to alienate you by making games in our own native language any more than people who make movies in their language without offering official dubs are. Yet if you were to create an unofficial dub, even if distributing it separately from the actual video file, you could potentially face criminal copyright infringement charges.

You're looking at this from the perspective of a non-native English speaker, which is fine, but where your argument falls flat is that you completely fail to recognize that this is an issue across the board, not just for us elitist English speakers. If the original game author chooses not to distribute their game without a translation, that is their choice, and their choice alone. You aren't being prevented from downloading or playing the game, you're just asked to play it in its original language or that of one of the official translations.

If you really want to play the games, you will. You'll use Google Translate or buy a translation dictionary or what have you, and you might lose quite a bit in translation, but you'll press forward and finish the game. Heck, you might even play it again. And what do you know if the more you play it, the less you have to look up those translations. In a few play throughs you might even be able to go it alone and still get all the enjoyment the native speakers do.

Otherwise, if the game's not worth the work, you won't play it.

The point is that 1) translations should be the game author's choice, and 2) even without a translation in-game, nobody's stopping you from getting the full experience except possibly yourself.

RoliX · Sat 09/07/2011 01:16:38

Its not about "choices". If an author release a game in 2004 and nobody contact him about turkish translation, there won't be any turkish translation, right? In this case, was it the author's special decision to NOT make any turkish translation? NO
Just nobody appeared with such intentions back then. And imagine that the author changed e-mail 3 times since 2004, and impossible to contact with him. Then it was the author's choice that there should NEVER EVER be a turkish translation to his game? I think, no.

You talk about restrictions... That you intented to release your games ONLY in english language, and you DON'T WANT foreign people to play your game, or just force them to use dictionary when playing. Thats a "bit" cruel, don't you think? Thats interesting how people play around with restrictions, when they use a totally freee game engine. So I don't know why this is the attitude here. I must mention that if somebody wants to force my hungarian fellows to play with a dictionary, then I don't care about his game too. There are many authors here with more kindness and less selfishness.

However, there should be a solution somewhere... I think that would be good if games could be freely translated to any language, but impossible to modify the original language. AND, the "cruel" authors could mark somehow that they do NOT allow people to translate their games, except with special permission.

p.s: if everything worked like you want, then most people couldn't play adventure games in my home country. Because most of famous games translation is unofficial.

monkey0506 · Sat 09/07/2011 02:18:16

I never used the word restrictions. I explained exactly why the scenario is the exact opposite of that. The only person stopping you or holding you back is you.

I don't find it cruel that the game author has the right to maintain and preserve the integrity of their creation. Imagine if I released a translation of your game and just inserted sexual metaphors and innuendo ("in her end-o" hehehe

) in place of some mundane dialogue between young children, I'd venture to say you'd be rather upset at me. And as extreme as that is, it's not to say the feature couldn't be used legitimately.

The problem though is that you, as the game author would have no control over the situation. You would be powerless to stop me distributing my "Official English Translation". The only way to resolve that is to leave things as they already are. It's not cruel. It's the only way to let the game author preserve the integrity of their own creation.

RoliX · Sat 09/07/2011 09:23:53

I don't know who is that jerk who take his time and make a full translation just to insert some nasty lines. Anyway, if the unofficial translation is just a joke, I mean its not a serious translation, then players will realize soon that thats not really a translation just a joke, and they change language. And they start to blame the site where they got the game or the translation, which is obviously not my site, e.g. not the official site.
Anyway, I can easily write to the game credits that I'm not responsible for the translations.

The cruel is when you say you simply don't want foreigns to play with your game. Or use dictionary, what is nonsense. Yeah, the author's right that he can decide what to do with his game. I don't say its not "legal" to deliberately restrict the game from foreign people. Its just kind of racism, and selfishness. Racism, if you obviously want your game ONLY for english speaking people. And selfishness if your game will be impossible to translate 5-10 years later, because you retired and didn't give the chance to the future to translate your game and spread the world, because you were afraid of the possibility of 0-1 jerks who migh play around with the translation.

I understand your arguments though, I just still think that the pros are much overweight the cons.

I'm in aware that you will never understand my points... I played a lot of great games here, and when I finish a game, I have a feeling that I MUST recommend that great game to my friends. But I can't recommend them, because they immediately ask "is there a translation?", and I say "no

" and thats all... I better don't even talk them about those games, because they just become jealous to me that I can play with that great games and they can't.

Kweepa · Sat 09/07/2011 09:55:05

I'm on the side of the would-be translators here.
As a game creator, I'd rather have someone enjoy a game translated than not at all. I don't believe that someone would go out of their way to translate an entire game and then fuck it up deliberately.
Of course, I'd rather the author help out with the translation effort than have it done in a vacuum, but if the author is too busy, uncontactable, or doesn't have the source or the know-how, I don't see the harm.
I think the best option is to have the game unlocked to translations by default, but if the author feels the need to control translations, have them check a box to lock out downloadable translations.

Snarky · Sat 09/07/2011 11:08:17

I'm also in favor of making the translation process easier and less restrictive. Removing the requirement for the game to be rebuilt to support every new translation would help not just unauthorized translators, but those who have the blessing of the creators but not actual access to the source.

Most video players allow you to load separate subtitle files (and even separate audio tracks), which anyone can easily create, and this has facilitated lots of "fansubs" that make stuff in foreign languages (particularly anime that is only available in Japanese) accessible to a wider audience. As far as I know, low-quality or fraudulent translations are not a serious problem.

It should be possible for AGS to display a warning when loading unauthorized translations, to alert players that the version they're playing may not accurately reflect the original, no? In my opinion that should be sufficient protection for the integrity of the game maker.

But then in general I think the whole translation system should be redesigned, and if I ever get around to messing with the engine code, it would be my #1 priority.

DoorKnobHandle · Sat 09/07/2011 11:39:37

Quote from: Kweepa on Sat 09/07/2011 09:55:05
I think the best option is to have the game unlocked to translations by default, but if the author feels the need to control translations, have them check a box to lock out downloadable translations.

That sounds like the way to go. We *need* to give game authors the option to lock their game from external translations, otherwise AGS will not be usable for commercial projects anymore, but it should be an option. And defaulting to having games be open to translations made by other people seems like a good idea. That way most titles would certainly be translatable by anybody with the exception of some protected ones in which cases we know the author really doesn't want it, it's their game and their decision.

Khris · Sat 09/07/2011 11:58:08

Regarding "control over translations":
Like has been said, if there's an opportunity to do something, there's an opportunity to abuse it. Is it likely in this case? I don't think so.
Snarky already mentioned fansubs, I was thinking of hacked console and handheld ROMs. It has already happened several times that I've read about a great game only to find out that it was never released outside Japan. Imagine my joy when I found out there is an unofficial English translation.

We don't know for sure what Yahtzee's attitude is in this case; let's not insinuate maliciousness just because he didn't answer an email that he maybe never got in the first place.

RoliX · Sat 09/07/2011 12:30:17

I don't know Yahtzee's intentions about his games' translations(if he has any). I just mentioned him as an example, because he made a famous game serie here, but impossible to contact with him nowadays. Probably we will never now what is his opinion about translating his games, therefore his games will be never available in foreign languages :/ I wouldn't be surprised if he just "didn't care" about his games anymore while the years passing... Probably lost his sources too? Anyway, impossible to translate those games...

Probably there are, and there will be always similar situation like this. I don't want to blame Yahtzee, just mentioned his games as an example for the negative effect of restricted translations. I don't think if somebody made a good game, he must look forward and reply all his emails about his game in a lifetime. Thats not how things work. Thats why people should get some "freedom" in translating.