Is anyone interested in having the game translated to Arabic?

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Soufwar
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Is anyone interested in having the game translated to Arabic?

Post by Soufwar »

Hi there, I saw that French has already been taken care of. Since I speak Arabic as well, I wanted to ask if there is interest in having the game be available in that language as well?
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josteph
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Re: Is anyone interested in having the game translated to Arabic?

Post by josteph »

Moved to Users' Forum, and left shadow topic in the translations forum so the thread will be visible from both places.
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EarthCake
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Re: Is anyone interested in having the game translated to Arabic?

Post by EarthCake »

Since you speak Arabic, perhaps you should consider to translate the game yourself.
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josteph
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Re: Is anyone interested in having the game translated to Arabic?

Post by josteph »

EarthCake, I think Soufwar is proposing to translate the game to Arabic, he's just asking if there are players interested in playing wesnoth in Arabic.
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EarthCake
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Re: Is anyone interested in having the game translated to Arabic?

Post by EarthCake »

josteph wrote: June 9th, 2019, 2:56 pm EarthCake, I think Soufwar is proposing to translate the game to Arabic, he's just asking if there are players interested in playing wesnoth in Arabic.
Yes, I figured that out. Here you can see that Soufwar said that he is good at programming, so I thought that he might want to translate the game himself.
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Ravana
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Re: Is anyone interested in having the game translated to Arabic?

Post by Ravana »

Translating is completely unrelated to programming.
Soufwar
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Re: Is anyone interested in having the game translated to Arabic?

Post by Soufwar »

EarthCake wrote: June 9th, 2019, 3:28 pm
josteph wrote: June 9th, 2019, 2:56 pm EarthCake, I think Soufwar is proposing to translate the game to Arabic, he's just asking if there are players interested in playing wesnoth in Arabic.
Yes, I figured that out. Here you can see that Soufwar said that he is good at programming, so I thought that he might want to translate the game himself.
EarthCake, I just wanted to see if there was interest in having the game translated to Arabic in the first place, after that I want to delve deep and start asking questions to other translators if they are kind enough to answer my questions about the process, this post was not a recommendation, its something close to market research. Thanks for your reply though :)
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sergey
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Re: Is anyone interested in having the game translated to Arabic?

Post by sergey »

I think one of the main reasons to play the game in a native (non English) language is lack of the required level of English. And people with insufficient knowledge of English are unlikely to (regularly) read these forums. So, your target audience may simply not read your question. Maybe there is a way to find out how many people download the game from the region of interest?

Generally, I would suggest to not expect a lot of feedback if you will decide to contribute. That is ok. People just playing and enjoy the game. Be aware that translating the whole game may take a lot of time.
Author of SP scenario Dragon Fight and SP campaign Captured by a Nightmare.
Created The Rise of Wesnoth (alternative mechanics) version of the mainline campaign.
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josteph
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Re: Is anyone interested in having the game translated to Arabic?

Post by josteph »

sergey wrote: June 10th, 2019, 11:44 am So, your target audience may simply not read your question.
I asked on discord if anyone wants an Arabic translation, I'll post here if I get responses.
otzenpunk
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Re: Is anyone interested in having the game translated to Arabic?

Post by otzenpunk »

sergey wrote: June 10th, 2019, 11:44 am I think one of the main reasons to play the game in a native (non English) language is lack of the required level of English. And people with insufficient knowledge of English are unlikely to (regularly) read these forums. So, your target audience may simply not read your question. Maybe there is a way to find out how many people download the game from the region of interest?
The problem is, people who don't understand the language probably don't download the game at all, nor would they recommend it to their friends, etc. So if you find an area, where fewer people download the game, it's probably even a stronger hint, that a translation might be needed. I don't know anything about the propagation of English language skills in Arabic speaking countries, it probably varies from country to country as well. But Arabic is one of the top 5 spoken languages worldwide, so imho it's definitely worth a translation! (In comparison to, for example, Skandinavian countries, where most of the people are basically educated bilingual anyway, and the existence of local translations is probably more a matter of convenience than necessity.)

I also don't know, why there isn't an Arabic translation available, because in my old 1.10 installation it is at least selectable in the language menu. Maybe it's been outdated or failed a quality check somehow, or it had problems with the variance of Arabic dialects or something. But the material probably still lies somewhere around, so Soufwar would eventually not have to start from scratch.
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sergey
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Re: Is anyone interested in having the game translated to Arabic?

Post by sergey »

otzenpunk wrote: June 12th, 2019, 8:56 am The problem is, people who don't understand the language probably don't download the game at all, nor would they recommend it to their friends, etc. So if you find an area, where fewer people download the game, it's probably even a stronger hint, that a translation might be needed.
Your observations make sense. I will clarify what I meant. If number of downloads in the region is very low, even with the added translation it may take a lot of time until the game gains popularity. And I think that was Soufar was interested in - to know that there are people who will appreciate his work.

It is obvious that Arabic translation will increase the game popularity and there are people who will play the game in Arabic. But there is a low chance that they will ask for a translation and low chance they will say "thank you".

Contributing to Wesnoth teaches to distinguish between things that you want to do and things that other people want you to do. You like Arabic language, you like Wesnoth, you want to give a possibility to play Wesnoth for non English speaking Arabs (no matter how many of them), you are ok to dedicate a lot of your free time for that - than do it. Otherwise don't. And no one will blame you for not doing it :)
Author of SP scenario Dragon Fight and SP campaign Captured by a Nightmare.
Created The Rise of Wesnoth (alternative mechanics) version of the mainline campaign.
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GunChleoc
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Re: Is anyone interested in having the game translated to Arabic?

Post by GunChleoc »

I agree - translate if it is what YOU want to do, because it is a lot of work.

I don't keep stats for my translations, but I do get the occasional personal thank you, because it does make a difference to my community. Arabic is sadly underrepresented in computing, so I'd say go for it.

P.S: We just got some Arabic spam in the off-topic section :lol:
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octalot
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Re: Is anyone interested in having the game translated to Arabic?

Post by octalot »

otzenpunk wrote: June 12th, 2019, 8:56 am I also don't know, why there isn't an Arabic translation available, because in my old 1.10 installation it is at least selectable in the language menu. Maybe it's been outdated or failed a quality check somehow, or it had problems with the variance of Arabic dialects or something. But the material probably still lies somewhere around, so Soufwar would eventually not have to start from scratch.
The quality check is that 70% (IIRC) of mainline is translated. Languages with less are only shown when the command-line option --all-translations is used.

The existing Arabic translation seems to have been last updated around 2008, and only has around 200 out of 18000 messages translated. Email for the old translator can be found at WesnothTranslations; I haven't tried emailing because I'd just be sending "are you still active?".
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