AGS Games with translations

[JpSoft]

I just checked the game database looking for a game to play and i felt sad when i saw that a little percentage of games have translations. Just few have spanish translations, which could explain why not many spanish speakers knows AGS. I Could say the same for another languages.

I just open this topic to encourage developers to work a little finding someone who help you in translations, or at least, create a plain translation with automatic translators available on internet. Is better than nothing.

Jp

[Iliya]

My games - Cosmos Quest 1, 2 and 3 have spanish translations thanks to Julio Pozo (nick - cireja). He helped me soo much with translations and also testing.

Thank you, cireja!

[Ookki]

It could be fun to try translating a game on finnish. Is translating easy, I mean AGS-wise?

[Iliya]

It could be fun to try translating a game on finnish. Is translating easy, I mean AGS-wise?

It's very easy. It's a simple .txt file. After each line in the file there is a empty line that you have to fill with the upper line translated content. That's all.

[Ookki]

Sweet! But I do need to get an orginal txt-file from the author to start, right?

[Alarconte]

I'm still waiting to someones help to translate my game about to release from spanish to english... And I suposse isn't that difficult!


About the thread itself, I think the lovers of classic adventure games mostly they know english.... The most of people, well. It's not a real problem for people capable of PROGRAMING...

[(deleted)]

(deleted)

[Peter Bear]

hofmeier du hast unrecht ...

Well, many commercial games keep the speech in english, but add the subtitles in the correct language ( wich is easy ) , like GTAs , Saint Rows and many first person shooter ( and the name of the places, the shops ... in the game aren't translated too).
Yes, the speech is less important in the cutscenes of those games than in an adventure game, but it works !  PLUS it teachs english to the player !

you should seek hard, I know a lot of french people that would enjoy playing amateur game, as long as they are as fun as commercial ones, but then hardly speak a word of english. The Frenchs aren't found of foreign language.

I already participated to a game translation ( trance pacific ), I had to offer my services. I did so because I enjoyed the game ... Well, the developpers should seek hard many translator before releasing a game they consider to be good.

My next will be avalaible in the 5 multi - as a playstation knows them - languages : english, spanish, french, german and italian ...

si !

( + I guess this post is in the wrong forum )

[kaputtnik]

I have worked on some games now, and I have always considered compiling a German translation for them - but I've come to realize that it's just not worth the effort.
There's almost no serious coverage for Indie games in Germany, be it blogs or printed media, and although lots of Germans don't consider themselves fluent in English, those interested in the subject of independent gaming find their way around on English Indie gaming sites. And they can enjoy games in English as well.

Another point is: I'd much rather play a game in the original language than a mediocre or bad translation. In a sense, I'd even say I'd rather play a mediocre or bad original than a bad translation. Awkward language in English does not strike me as heavily as in my mother tongue, I guess.

Yeah, and being kind of a professional translator myself, I can tell how hard it is to compile a really good software localization, especially if it's about a text heavy and partly lyrical genre like the adventure game genre  - it's not enough to have a good grasp of the language you are translating from, you have to be absolutely skilled in your own language as well to make a translation work.

Basically: By all means, if you're creating a game in French or Russian or Spanish, get someone to translate it to English, the language of internet and computer games and everything since 1980. But before you let somebody go the extra mile of translating it to another language, you should first consider:

- is the game worth it?
(No offense, but translating a game that most people don't really enjoy in English is a pretty useless task in my opinion. There are exceptions, of course. And of course you change the whole game with a translation, fixing style errors, adding jokes and giving the NPCs more character, for example.)

- does the target audience really need this translation?
(As Pierre said: Most French people might welcome a French translation, and I think this is true for Spanish, too - but I'd argue that less Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians really need translations. More Germans than Dutch and Scandinavians, though. This is my pretty cliché English language skill table I have put together in my head at work, based on experience, from rather weak to rather good: France, Spain, Italy, Turkey --> Greece, Russia, Czech Republic --> Germany, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland --> Netherlands, Scandinavia)

These are only examples based on my experience, and I absolutely do not mean to offend anyone who considers himself a very proficient English speaker and is from France or Spain, and I also do not deny that there are lots of Germans who don't know a single word of English, but I hope you get the rough idea of what I was meaning to say.

[JimmyShelter]

kaputtnik makes sense.

His skill table seems pretty correct.

As a dutch person, I still rather play the original English games, then Dutch translations. (The same goes for tv-series and movies I watch, and books I read: I always prefer the original english versions).

I only prefer translations if it's for languages I don't read well or at all. I could play a german or french game, but if there was a dutch or english translation I'd prefer that.

[Anian]

Actually coming from a small country, I mostly go for english when other languages are concerned and it's hard for me to understand why tv shows and such are translated (by that I mean that htey don't have subtittles) in Germany, Italy, France, Russia, Poland but I guess it makes sense for those nations when they have 50 milion and more speakers...
But in my country there's isn't so much "pride" in our language (nor money) except for cartoons for kids which have voiceovers.

Most of the movies, books, comics, cartoons, games are from USA or UK so I like to watch those in original. But for example I go to Austria and there I can't buy games cause 99% of them are in german which is kinda annoying (not just because I don't know it that well but because it's not as original authors intented it to sounds an be).

Still I think english is pretty much the standard for internet, besides it's a pretty simple language to learn the basics of (maybe you won't use the tenses correctly but you'd understand reading them) and doesn't have any "strange" letters (not just as japanese but languages like german too) and many people learn it at school, so if making a game in french or german or italian or whichever, why not make an english translation?
If it becomes a popular game then of course making other versions is fine/worth it.

[neon]

I started translating some AGS games from english to german last year. I finished two translations, one has never been published. It's really hard work.

I can't give a tip, if the games you want to translate are worth the time you have to spend, especially when you realize, that translating is much harder work than it seems. You can't just translate word by word, you will have to catch every single statement and joke, otherwise the translated game will not have the quality that the original has. This means, that your english skills have to be really good.

One tip if you really start a translation: Don't try to translate a game, that hasn't been finished yet. Always wait for the complete text. It will save a lot of work.

[paolo]

One tip if you really start a translation: Don't try to translate a game, that hasn't been finished yet. Always wait for the complete text. It will save a lot of work.

Definitely - you're wasting your time if you start translating a game before it is finished.

Another tip that I find really useful and would recommend to all translators - ask the author to send you the complete game and play it while you are translating. You can then see the text in context, which helps greatly with problems that arise in translation such as working out the appropriate gender. For example, "I see it" could be "Je le vois" or "Je la vois" in French, and "Where are you going?" could be "Dove vai?", "Dove va?" or "Dove andate?" in Italian. These can only be translated correctly if you know who or what is being referred to. Playing the game as you work on the translation can also flag up problems where the same piece of text is used in more than one place with more than one meaning. This can be resolved by asking the game author to modify the game text so that there are two separate lines to translate.

There are French and Italian adventure game communities out there who welcome translations of AGS games into their own languages (http://katurajdr.fr/jeux-ags-fr/ for the French versions and http://www.adventuresplanet.it/ for the Italian ones).

@Ookki: There is an option in AGS to output all the text of the game as the file that Harg mentioned... you then fill in the blank lines with the translations and give it back to the author, who then runs another command in AGS to put the translated text into the game. Anyone playing the game then has the option (in the set-up options) of playing the game either in the original language or in the translated language.

[Leon]

Working on a translation right now (The Hitchhiker's Guide) and I know how much work it is to translate a game. Creating translations isn't only extra work for the translator but also for the game maker and most of the time they just don't care/bother.

It would be nice though if the translation file itself is more accessible. At the moment the .tra file isn't plain text.

If it would be readable with any texteditor, the game maker could supply a 'blank' translation file and let the player decide if he/she wants to translate the game. There could be a sharing-thread for exchanging .tra files. If the game maker doesn't want his game to be in other languages than the default, he doesn't include the .tra file and the players wouldn't know what to translate. That way you get an open system where everyone can be a translator and you're not completely dependent on the game maker. The gamemaker can then move on without being bothered by the game, while still work can be done on translation(s).

Another benefit is the 'see in context' as paolo mentioned that would work straight away.

[neon]

so if making a game in french or german or italian or whichever, why not make an english translation?
If it becomes a popular game then of course making other versions is fine/worth it.

Sure, it's always a good idea to have an english version. But if the author isn't a native english speaker, he has to find someone who translates it.

In my case, my english is good enough to translate from english to german. But I would never translate from german to english. I would prefer, that a native english speaker, who understands german good enough to translate, would do it. Finding a translator is not that easy, it's much work, as you see in the comments above. And it's easier to find someone if you release your game in original language first, so it can be reviewed by some players to show a translator that it's worthy to put so much additional work into it.

[Anian]

Well of course you don't have to write an english version right away.
Idealy you'd have somebody to translate and somebody to proof read it and maybe adapt some jokes and frazes if needed. Of course both should play the game through so if not when beta testing then after the game is available is the only logical time to do that.

I was just saying that translating a game to english brings a much wider audience (if say it's in french only ones who know french can play it, but if it's then translated to english then some percent of people who speak german, russian etc. can play it as well) and more people can enjoy the game.

[Pumaman]

It would be nice though if the translation file itself is more accessible. At the moment the .tra file isn't plain text.

If it would be readable with any texteditor, the game maker could supply a 'blank' translation file and let the player decide if he/she wants to translate the game.

This was discussed a while back, but the feeling of most game authors was that they didn't want the possibility of people creating very bad, unofficial translations of the game.

If you've made a game, I think you have a right to check any translation that somebody wants to do for it, to ensure quality standards; if people could just make translations at random this would be bypassed, and potential players could then unintentionally end up downloading an unofficially "translated" version of the game that would give them the wrong idea about what the game was like.

[bicilotti]

This was discussed a while back, but the feeling of most game authors was that they didn't want the possibility of people creating very bad, unofficial translations of the game.

If you've made a game, I think you have a right to check any translation that somebody wants to do for it, to ensure quality standards; if people could just make translations at random this would be bypassed, and potential players could then unintentionally end up downloading an unofficially "translated" version of the game that would give them the wrong idea about what the game was like.

Of course, if you're worshipped like a God... aaaargh I was trying to make a joke on the unofficial russian translation of 1213, but I cannot find it in the database. Oh well, even internet celebrities have their rights...

[JpSoft]

Well, a good option could be to add a link in the game page asking for this. Something like " You want this game in your language? Help us! ", where everybody could download the plain txt file, translate it and resend to the author. Then, if the translator considers the traslation good enough, will need only conpile the TRS archive and include it in the main download link. If many AGS games had this option, translators could select the game they want contribute.

My first AG was SQ1 in english; to play it, i needed a English-Spahisn dictionary to translate anyword (i was 10 yeard old or so) which was a good way to learn english. But now i prefer play games in my native tongue, at least with subtitles.

I feel is a pain that many wonderfull AGS games in the game database dont have translations, unaccesible for thousands (or millions) of people. When i released Paul Quest (only in spanish) the game had less than 100 downloads in the first 15 days. Then, when i included the english translation the game had 500 downloads the following month; until today i received 17 emails from people who played the game: all in english.

Jp

[Leon]

Well, a good option could be to add a link in the game page asking for this. Something like " You want this game in your language? Help us! ", where everybody could download the plain txt file, translate it and resend to the author. Then, if the translator considers the traslation good enough, will need only conpile the TRS archive and include it in the main download link. If many AGS games had this option, translators could select the game they want contribute.

Yeah right, spending weeks of translating to hear that the author doesn't approve... hmm...

My first AG was SQ1 in english; to play it, i needed a English-Spahisn dictionary to translate anyword (i was 10 yeard old or so) which was a good way to learn english. But now i prefer play games in my native tongue, at least with subtitles.

I feel is a pain that many wonderfull AGS games in the game database dont have translations, unaccesible for thousands (or millions) of people. When i released Paul Quest (only in spanish) the game had less than 100 downloads in the first 15 days. Then, when i included the english translation the game had 500 downloads the following month; until today i received 17 emails from people who played the game: all in english.

Jp

I don't speak a word Spanish (alright, I can order a beer, but that's it...), so when a game's released in that language, there's not much I can do with it. Same goes for Italian. I studied French and German so I have an above everage knowledge of these languages, but it's not as fluent as English or Dutch, but I'm sure not everyone can say that. When it's translated into English, I can understand quite well, as do most of the players, since that language is taught at most schools in Europe and is generally used.

I'm sure you can't expect that everyone speaks English at the age of 10 but then again, it's a great way to learn the language. See where it took you .. ;-)

You can't compare SQ1 with Paul Quest, can you? Imagine they'd released SQ in Spanish first. How many game would have been sold you think? (FYI SQ was released in Spanish.. but not at first.)

My suggestion: let the author of the game know you want a translation. If he gets enough requests, he might consider and start the search for a translator.