Translating Reborn?

[TrainerNero]

Hello!

 

This question is mostly aimed towards the mods, developers, and obviously Amethyst. I am French, and a French-friend introduced me to Reborn. We both are almost bilingual and enjoyed this game a lot, but as we started speaking of Pokémon Reborn around us, it appeared that more and more of our friends would like to play it, but they can't really read English well enough to understand the scenario, nor know the English names for Pokémon, talents, and attacks.

Since my friend and I are pretty fluent in English, and versed in traduction, I was wondering if you would allow us to translate the game from English to French. It would probably take us a few months, given how productive we can get even when we are motivated, and if you are interested by this idea you could put a "Pokémon Reborn : French Version" on the downloading part. 

 

Thanks for your future answers.

[Vanitas]

sorry but classic french people

[Zarc]

I’m french too and yeah , classic french people  i mean the game is pretty easy to understand even with a bad english level. They cannot make an exception for one language other than english , otherwise everyones will want an alternative language too unfortunately :/ 

Edited November 2, 2017 by Zarc

[Dante52]

Not that my opinion matters, but I think this is a pretty cool idea. And I think it's great that you're volunteering to do the work yourself and not just asking that it magically happen somehow. 

[seki108]

1 hour ago, TrainerNero said:

Since my friend and I are pretty fluent in English, and versed in traduction, I was wondering if you would allow us to translate the game from English to French. It would probably take us a few months, given how productive we can get even when we are motivated, and if you are interested by this idea you could put a "Pokémon Reborn : French Version" on the downloading part. 

 

I'm fairly certain Ame has allowed this, but advised tranlations to be done after final release so she can make small dialouge changes throughout without messing up the translation

[Zarc]

Oh , then if she allowed this , nevermind so.

Edited November 2, 2017 by Zarc

[seki108]

@TrainerNero  After looking, our resident frozen treat (a site mod) had this to say about it:

 

 

[Alistair]

@Amethyst well well, that's a nice coincidence =p

[DarkstarRipklaw]

I'm up for helping out the portuguese translation if you guys need.

[etherzebra]

I have no expertise in this area so I'm kinda curious. How would you go about doing this for a script this big? The first thing I'd try if I was fluent in English and French would be to pass the whole dialog set into google translate then edit or accept the French translations one at a time. That could make it easier if google gets it right and less taxing on the brain even if it just supplies some of the right words and syntax. Does that sound reasonable?

[TrainerNero]

Not really, Google Translate is really really bad most of the time. No, we'd have to translate it one sentence at a time. It would take long, but eventually we'd manage - that's why I think it would take a few months at best. Then we'd have to change Pokémon, talent, attacks and items' names to their french equivalent - would be pretty fast - and translate the original names of items that only exist in this game. Translating every and each dialogue would be the longest part of the work, and we have to do it "manually" because Google Translate would screw it up really badly. Fortunately for me, learning how to translate a text was part of my studies, so I have a few techniques and methods written down that I would follow if we are granted the authorization. 

And, of course, if our version is considered official enough to be put on the website, I would actively work to translate the content that is still to come, when it will come out.

[Egzample]

Look up the topic linked by seki108 - certainly, it would be better if we waited with translation until the development is over - in order to keep consistency, for instance. Also I think it will be necessary for each translation team to agree upon a few things before doing the job - like, generally character names shouldn't be translated, but what with, let's say, Shade? Also, not in every language mon names are translated, not all attack names are translated, etc.

9 hours ago, etherzebra said:

to pass the whole dialog set into google translate

 Abomination! xD It is literally the best way to lose climate and uniqueness of every character.

[Zargerth]

Google Translate has it's uses, but you shouldn't put too much/blind faith in it. If anything, it can give pointers; for instance if you have no idea how to say something in the foreign language you're translating to, you can try Google Translate, and then do a (Google) search for whatever Google Translate gave you. This mostly applies if you're looking for or need information.

 

Names aren't generally translated, but it comes down to how you want to translate. Translating names is in fact sort of localization, domestication to be exact. Of course that means you have to retain consistency, in other words, you can't selectively domesticate some names while leaving the others as they are.

 

Edit: as a clarification, I don't simply mean translating names that are actual words like Shade. I also mean "giving new names" to characters that are more familiar or easier to pronounce (to the people you're translating to/for).

Edited November 3, 2017 by Zargerth
Added a clarification

[etherzebra]

Fair enough lol. It's kinda sad to hear that Google Translate still sucks this bad.

[Egzample]

18 hours ago, etherzebra said:

Fair enough lol. It's kinda sad to hear that Google Translate still sucks this bad.

 

Well, it has its uses (e.g. it works surprisingly well with scientific papers, at last in my language), but when you are up to to create a good translation, localization, it is somehow helpful, but you can't rely on it, especially if you want to make anything look professional - and on a side note, it will be so for a couple of next decades, until the real AI is developed, but it is a whole different story.

[Tris]

Hm well that's interesting. I am french too and i couldnt agree more when it comes to friends being reluctant to reborn because it is not translated. What a shame really.

Anyway if you're going to translate it before the final episode comes down (which is likely to be in 2 years or so) , I would happily give some of my time; i've spent two years in britain upgrading my english, or at least trying to do so, and many more in Reborn.

 

[Waynolt]

Hi!

I know Ame asked not to spoil changes in teh code, but this isn't much of a spoiler anyway... I'm still putting it in the spoilers tage, just in case.

 

Spoiler

The game's scripts.rxdata has a

if LANGUAGES.length>=2
	commands[cmdLanguage=commands.length]=_INTL("Language")
end

in the script for the main menu, which might mean that multilanguage support is at least being considered.

 

I'd also like to point out that Notepad++ comes with a very useful "compare" function, which would allow us to rapidly check for changed lines of dialogue between episodes, making it quite fast and easy to update their translation.

Edited December 5, 2017 by Waynolt