~[Arabic Translation]~

Varkez · Post by **Varkez** » April 2nd, 2007, 6:51 pm

Hello Fellow Wesnoth Players & staff,

i am very impressed eith tis amazing game, it is not only fun to play but it also has a Great Replay Value!

So Basicly To me it was love at first sight

!

so as a loyal Arab i have decided that i should translate this game to Arabic since it is such a wonderfull game & Many Arabs dont speak english very well so why not help them enjoy this game?

i will Translate this game to arabic hopefully But There Are Three Major Problems!

First of all: I Do not know how to (Tools & Etc..)

Second of all: i need at least one person to help me (this isnt a big prob but it would be usefull to have a helper

)

Last But Not Least: The MAJOR HUGE Differance between Arabic & English

let me explain this veeeeery simply by pointing out some small points:

1- Arabic is written from right-to-left NOT left-to-right As Most languages
2-Arabic grammar is very different and complicated so translation is hard.

Example: The Sentance "The Duck Has Crossed the River"
would be translated in arabic Grammar "Crossed The Duck The River Has" i know it sounds stupid but thats the right way it would be in arabic.

3- The vast Cultural Differances the would make some refrences such as "Serpent"("Swimming Snake"!?) or "Gryphon" (Might have to be "Flying Giant Chicken"!? or something or translated as is ; wont have meaning ) Sound Vague and non-comperhendble so a loooong Thing will have to be made.

4-Names: arabic letters dont include "V" & "G" (they include around 9 letters that are rarely found in other languages & 1 Letter that only exists in Arabic

) so name translation will be hard.

----

So hopefully know you understand the Difficulties(i only Wrote them for that reason

) i will Encounter So if i take a loooong time dont blame Me

Sincerely Yours,

Varkez

Post by **vonHalenbach** » April 2nd, 2007, 8:53 pm

Varkez wrote:Hello Fellow Wesnoth Players & staff,

i am very impressed eith tis amazing game, it is not only fun to play but it also has a Great Replay Value!

So Basicly To me it was love at first sight !

so as a loyal Arab i have decided that i should translate this game to Arabic since it is such a wonderfull game & Many Arabs dont speak english very well so why not help them enjoy this game?

i will Translate this game to arabic hopefully But There Are Three Major Problems!

*First of all: I Do not know how to (Tools & Etc..)

*Second of all: i need at least one person to help me (this isnt a big prob but it would be usefull to have a helper )

*Last But Not Least: The MAJOR HUGE Differance between Arabic & English

Hello and welcome Varkez!

Nice, that you want to help us to make this game better. I will try my best to help you to set up the translation tools on your computer. I need to know if you are using Linux or Windows as operating system. Your computer must be able to use unicode fonts. Windows XP and newer are able to use unicode. (Windows 98 is not really) In Linux you can test it on the console if you type

Code: Select all

locale

then you will see if your installed locale is using unicode font if it is ending with

Code: Select all

.utf8

.

The translation-tool poedit, which runs on Windows and Linux is able to use right to left languages. Make sure that you use the newest of it (i think 1.3.6).

*Example: The Sentance "The Duck Has Crossed the River"
would be translated in arabic Grammar "Crossed The Duck The River Has" i know it sounds stupid but thats the right way it would be in arabic.

You have to use the right grammar, so an arabic speaking gamer should not be able to see that it is a translation from english language. Be a bit inventive when you make a translation. You don't have to stick to every single word. You even can change the translated sentences to more funny sentences if you are able to do this through the whole campaign.

*3- The vast Cultural Differances the would make some refrences such as "Serpent"("Swimming Snake"!?) or "Gryphon" (Might have to be "Flying Giant Chicken"!? or something or translated as is ; wont have meaning ) Sound Vague and non-comperhendble so a loooong Thing will have to be made.

Yes. This has to be thought about first! Make a list of units in english and write the translated arabic word after it. So you (and others) will be able to use it through all campaigns. (You can open a new page in the wiki) You have to find good names. Think about it good. Is there no arabic word for falcon? else you can invent a new arabic word for gryphon.

*4-Names: arabic letters dont include "V" & "G" (they include around 9 letters that are rarely found in other languages & 1 Letter that only exists in Arabic

) so name translation will be hard.

I see your problem here.

As described above, you can make a list of the names from every unit and give them arabic names. Feel free to do so. So Delfador can be Hadshi

Best regards
Stefan

Post by **torangan** » April 2nd, 2007, 9:15 pm

Let's see.
Tools - you've got someone to ask already.
Helper - you've got find a native speaker willing to do this. Don't know where.
Right to Left - looks like a problem. Wesnoth has some support done by the translators into Hebrew but AFAIK this work was never completed. It'll work for some parts but not everywhere.
Grammar - you can freely reorder the words in the translation, this problem is something which every translation has to a varying degree.
Letters - no problem here. Our font supports all characters used in arabic.

So your best hope would be to find some arabic translation groups and try to get some help with completting the right to left text support in Wesnoth. There you should also have a good chance of getting help the translation itself.

Post by **Viliam** » April 2nd, 2007, 9:42 pm

Hi Varkez!

Tools

You can download the translation tool here: poEdit

This page displays the translation status: http://gettext.wesnoth.org/
If someone adds there Arabic packages, you can download them, translate, and send to maintainer.
EDIT: Just go here -- http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/wesnoth/branches/1.2/po/ -- select a package, and download the file "*.pot". Rename it to "ar.po" and you can start translating.

You can find some information about translating Wesnoth here:
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/WesnothTranslationsHowTo
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/GettextForTranslators

People

I think you will always find someone willing to help in this forum. This should not be a problem.

Instead I would recommend to find some people near you who like strategic games, and tell them about Wesnoth. So you could bring more people to Arabic team. This will be useful not only to share the work (and there is a lot of texts to translate), but also to brainstorm about difficult translations. (Please note that Wesnoth is already translated to many languages, so it is also currently playable by people who do not speak English, but speak some of the other languages where translation exists.)

When I started a Slovak translation, I found a friend who was not willing to translate texts, but was willing to help brainstorming about unit names. So I gave him a list of all units, and he gave me back list of suggested translations. It was a big help, because it saved me a lot of time thinking.

Language

Changing the order of words in sentence is usually not a problem, because you translate the sentence, not individual words. Except the right-to-left direction, other topics were probably already successfully solved with other languages.

Post by **zookeeper** » April 2nd, 2007, 9:58 pm

Viliam wrote:Changing the order of words in sentence is usually not a problem, because you translate the sentence, not individual words.

I'd like to add that you're not always translating just sentences, but several sentences that go together, like one piece of dialogue spoken by a character consisting of several sentences. You're translating the meaning of the text, and what words and number of sentences you use to convey the meaning is irrelevant, as long as the overall feeling or style stays similar.

Of course, when translating campaigns and such it's usually vital that you actually play through (mostly) every part that you translate so you can be sure that you've gotten the meaning or intention of each piece of text correctly, which can be a lot harder when just looking at the raw strings to translate without any further context.

Post by **kilder** » April 3rd, 2007, 8:30 am

مرحبا! كيف الحال

(firefox doesn't allow me to write properly right-to-left)

It's been a time since I studied arabic, and I only did two years, but, anyway, I can value how much work will it be for you.

Be sure I'll check the translations, but I doubt I can help anymore.

See you, and good luck!

Post by **torangan** » April 3rd, 2007, 2:32 pm

Would be nice if someone could check the hebrew translation to give us a status report on the RTL support.

Varkez · Post by **Varkez** » April 10th, 2007, 5:05 pm

I need to know if you are using Linux or Windows as operating system

Windows XP

Is there no arabic word for falcon? else you can invent a new arabic word for gryphon.

You know there isnt only one word for falcon there are about.. 4 or 5?
good thing about arabic is that it has a rich Vocab.

But There are alot of dialects...

مرحبا! كيف الحال

(firefox doesn't allow me to write properly right-to-left)

It's been a time since I studied arabic, and I only did two years, but, anyway, I can value how much work will it be for you.

Be sure I'll check the translations, but I doubt I can help anymore.

See you, and good luck!

بخير الحمدلله!
Your arabic is kind of good but thats what i meant when i said formal arabic the globaly known arabic is Formal

Would be nice if someone could check the hebrew translation to give us a status report on the RTL support.

-[Cut out due to the threats by the Mods]-
(sorry i lost my temper there

)

Varkez · Post by **Varkez** » April 10th, 2007, 5:22 pm

Since i have School Exams for the next month & a half the translation will only move veeeeeeeeeeeeeeery slowly but once my vacation begins (3.5 months) I Will hopefully Turn the nitro "ON"!!!!

Post by **vonHalenbach** » April 10th, 2007, 8:59 pm

Varkez, you are very welcome here, until you loose your temper again. We like to maintain a friendly athmosphere here.

Since you use Windows XP there is only one choice in translation-tools. As Villiam already said poedit works on windows.

You don't have to translate all by yourself, when you can find friends who would like to help you.

Post by **Viliam** » April 11th, 2007, 8:06 am

Sometimes there are different variants of the language, and it should be specified which variant is used. For example "British English" or "Traditional Chinese". So also you should choose one variant of Arabic, and use this (and tell us which one you chose).

Here are some ISO language codes for languages and countries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-2_codes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639:a
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1

Please respect that the Wesnoth forum is not the right place to discuss political or other sensitive topics. There are a lot of other places for this on the internet... Things not related to Wesnoth can be discussed in the "Off-Topic" category, but also there some (high) level of politeness is required.

We try to help translation of Wesnoth to any language, if there is a volunteer to translate the texts. Translating the game into Hebrew, Arabic, Basque, Catalan, Valencian Catalan, Latin, Esperanto, or keeping separate American English and British English translations is not an expression of any political or other opinions. Right-to-left font support is a technical problem, and we try to solve it. If you want, you can volunteer to provide a better technical solution; if not, someone else has to do it.

Post by **torangan** » April 11th, 2007, 10:35 am

This is a free community for a free game. Hebrew speaker (coming from whereever) are best to judge this technical issue since there is a partial translation into this language which is RTL. They can easily tell wheter it's written correctly all over the place or where it's written in the wrong direction. Politics don't belong in here at all.

BTW before you rant at me again, notice that it's most likely me who'll be responsible for getting your translations in if you get the project running.

Varkez · Post by **Varkez** » April 12th, 2007, 9:54 am

Umm sorry?

ill try my best to keep my temper...

Sometimes there are different variants of the language, and it should be specified which variant is used. For example "British English" or "Traditional Chinese". So also you should choose one variant of Arabic, and use this (and tell us which one you chose).

Ill use Formal (Literary-Classic) Arabic.....

DAWS · Post by **DAWS** » May 2nd, 2007, 7:47 pm

Hi Varkez,

i am a native arabic speaker but في الغربة, so my arabic has rusted a bit... I don't have all too much time on my hands, but i don't mind looking at the translations and giving a second opinion every once in a while. I know this is not much help, yet i think an arabic translation for this lovely game is a great idea.

Anyways, feel free to pm me with anything you got.

Varkez · Post by **Varkez** » May 14th, 2007, 5:06 pm

could someone delete tephlons post? its annoying

oh ad i started translating today i finished around 100 Strings

oh & i have a question do i translate the $n /n stuff?

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