Croatian translation - it's very, very bad

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lujo
Posts: 27
Joined: December 10th, 2014, 10:21 pm

Croatian translation - it's very, very bad

Post by lujo »

Hi, I've played the game on and off before but this is the first time I tried my native tongue translation. I am horrified. Maybe it's better in the campaigns than it is in the tutorial, but I can't possibly use dismissive enough language or enough negative hyperbole to do justice to the description of how afwul it is. I'm actually a Croatian teacher, Croatian-English translator and a published author in Croatian, and whoever did that translation wouldn't be able get out of 2nd grade primary school if their life depended on it.

Ok, sorry for possible arrogance, but I've actually worked in primary schools and I'm still shocked by the quality. Could someone please point me to the script, I just have to do something about this. Also the originals. I also think some of it isn't just illiteracy, but intentional trolling, because the "loss condition" has been translated as "Kill yourself!", in a tone which suggests that you should kill yourself if you lose instead of losing should whoever you're playing die. It's really that bad.

Please, I'm completely unfamiliar with the file structure and not very good at digging through those, but I could help with the actual problem. Could someone point me to the right stuff?

EDIT: Good lord, there's "text contains wrong markup" errors, and there seems to be syntax, spelling and all sorts of errors in just about any sentence.

EDIT2: And it's only partially translated so there's awful, confusing croatian all jumbled up with english. I think noone ever reported it because they took a look and just changed it to back to English. It's pretty much unplayable as is.

EDIT3: There's also errors in the English text, only just here and there.
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iceiceice
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Joined: August 23rd, 2013, 2:10 am

Re: Croatian translation - it's very, very bad

Post by iceiceice »

I have basically no firsthand knowledge of translations, but I can tell you that you can find much info about translations / translators on the wiki: StartingPoints
lujo
Posts: 27
Joined: December 10th, 2014, 10:21 pm

Re: Croatian translation - it's very, very bad

Post by lujo »

Well, that's a start, thank you. I'll try to mail the Croatian translation guy first. It looks complicated.
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GunChleoc
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Re: Croatian translation - it's very, very bad

Post by GunChleoc »

I am sorry that the translation is so bad - that's a problem software projects always have, that they often can't do a real QA on translations, since the developers don't speak the languages. For big languages, the translation community can usually take care of this, but for smaller languages, there aren't enough translators to go around. Thanks for offering to help!

Are you familiar with software translation in particular? There are a few differences to literary translation:
  1. You have to be absolutely anal rententive about consistency of terms, so use a terminology base where you collect your core terms, so you can look them up later. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but the user won't recognize it as a rose. I am attaching an Excel table I use to keep track of core terms and unit names, as well as placenames on the maps. It might be a good starting point for you to get your terminology sorted before you start fixing strings.
  2. Often strings are similar, or there are small changes to the English source strings. So, make sure to work with a Translation Memory. I recommend Virtaal or PoEdit, both tools are free. These tools will greatly speed up your work.
You can get the translation files from here: http://www.wesnoth.org/gettext/index.la ... ion=branch

It's not that complete yet, so the best strategy is probably to proofread what has already been done first, using your terminology base.

You will probably also find useful stuff in the Wiki "Translations" category and in the Translators' Guide.
Attachments
wesnoth_terms-blank.zip
Wesnoth core terms
(20.92 KiB) Downloaded 647 times
lujo
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Joined: December 10th, 2014, 10:21 pm

Re: Croatian translation - it's very, very bad

Post by lujo »

Thank you VERY much, I'll check all this stuff out and try to get to work. And yes, I think I understand how it goes with core keywords in software and stuff. Thanks for the midful advice, though.
lujo
Posts: 27
Joined: December 10th, 2014, 10:21 pm

Re: Croatian translation - it's very, very bad

Post by lujo »

Also, there's a typo in the template, says "Rave" where it should be "race" :)
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GunChleoc
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Re: Croatian translation - it's very, very bad

Post by GunChleoc »

Just fix it. In the file I'm using, it says "Cinneadh" anyway ;)

BTW I also have a few terms in there that aren't used by Wesnoth, but there aren't that many of them. Wesnoth is just the first game I translated, and it makes sense for me to keep all fantasy/weapons related stuff in one file.
lujo
Posts: 27
Joined: December 10th, 2014, 10:21 pm

Re: Croatian translation - it's very, very bad

Post by lujo »

Working on it. The first pass is just going to be somewhat better with a lot of the terrible things, typo's and stuff fixed, and most of the empty space plugged (+ picking up terminology), which should make it a lot easier on the brain, then a secnd pass might get it fully sorted out.
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GunChleoc
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Re: Croatian translation - it's very, very bad

Post by GunChleoc »

Sounds like you have a strategy :D
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