What do you think about the translations?

[MadMax]

Make that 10...I only play in English....

Make that 11... RPGs/fantasy in languages other than English sounds to me like a Mass in vernacular to a conservative Catholic.

silvermane

make that 14. Other languages to me are like hearing that Mass said in Latin.

[Dave]

° WHY IS THIS FORUM ONLY IN ENGLISH! I REALLY CAN'T UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING!

You are welcome to start a Wesnoth forum in whatever language you prefer.

I think in most languages though typing in all-caps is not a good idea.

David

[Viliam]

I think in most languages though typing in all-caps is not a good idea.

Hmmm, this leads to an off-topic question:

Is there something similar to "typing in all-caps" in languages like Chinese or Japanese?

[stillnotelf]

Is there something similar to "typing in all-caps" in languages like Chinese or Japanese?

DISCLAIMER: Everything written below is based on my very, very, VERY shaky high-school Japanese. Take it with a large grain of salt.

Japanese has three alphabets accompanying the one spoken language: Kanji are borrowed Chinese ideographs, Hiragana is a phonetic alphabet used for natively Japanese words, and Katakana is a phonetic alphabet used for borrowed foreign words. Japanese words like "hanbaagaa" (hamburger) or "aisukuriimu" (ice cream) are generally written in katakana, and native words like "tsunami" or "samurai" would be written in hiragana.

However, advertisers often will use katakana for everything, because the characters are generally simpler-looking and easier to read...this is sort of like all caps. Having never seen a Japanese message board, I don't know what they're like, but I'd guess that the Japanese equivalent of all caps and 13375p34k is typing in all katakana with lots of English mixed in.

(If anyone knows better, feel free to correct me)

[Tux2B]

If I could have made it (a forum in another language than English), then it would already be finished, and I would have proposed it.
But now I'm working on Dutch user campaigns translations. Maybe later I will try. Maybe later...

I understand English is the most used language, but still, not everybody can speak and write it fluently.

(as you can see, I have stopped writing in all caps.)
(I know some Chinese, but in Chinese, I don't think there are any capital letters. But maybe someone who is Chinese will correct me... )

[Kamamura]

Being a translator myself, I can say that the Czech translation contains plenty of fundamental mistakes:

1) literal translations
2) adherence to English order of the words in a sentence

This is the most frequent mistake of inexperienced translators, they go through the text and translate word-by-word, producing an awkwardly sounding text. On the contrary, experienced translators first read the text and then they express its meaning using their own words.

I always play Wesnoth (and other games) in English.

[Viliam]

I think it could be useful to provide some more international support on the Wesnoth website. Probably the easiest solution would be this:

Make a new forum cathegory, called "International". Make a new forum for each language, where moderator fluent in that language is available. Also install PHP BB support for other languages. (This would probably require switching the database to UTF-8; which is not as difficult as it may seem.)

In addition to general wesnoth forum rules, there should be no "off topic" messages in international forums (these are likely to start a flamewar; and a flamewar not understood by majority of Wesnoth forum users, would be difficult to handle properly). The discussion should be only in the language of the forum, with reasonable exceptions (e.g. if someone is fluent in the language enough to understand a serious question, but is unable to answer in the same language, and when an answer in other language is obviously better than no answer).

[torangan]

Being a translator myself, I can say that the Czech translation contains plenty of fundamental mistakes:

Why don't you send improvement suggestions to the people working on it? I guess they'd like to get help from an experienced translator.

[Viliam]

Why don't you send improvement suggestions to the people working on it? I guess they'd like to get help from an experienced translator.

Same opinion. Kamamura, I completely agree with what you wrote; those mentioned are the typical beginners' errors. But more useful would be, if you would post in the forum examples, like "this sentence is translated like this, but should be translated like this, because...". (If there is no topic on Czech translation yet, please start a new topic.)

IMHO forum discussion would be better than e-mail, because (1) it will remain visible also to future Czech translators, and (2) it may be useful also to other translators who understand Czech.

[ryn]

Sadly, none of the non-english languages I speak have been translated, and my knowledge of them is such that while I might be able to use them properly in speech, it might be better if I left translation to someone else. (I speak Hebrew, English, and Lojban)

[torangan]

Maybe you should start a translation and with a little luck, a native speaker will join? Chances to get help are most likely higher if there's already something done on the translation.

[Viliam]

I speak Hebrew, English, and Lojban

It seems like each new non-Latin language brings its own set of problems related to font. If you translate a few sentences to Hebrew, and then do some testing to make the font display correctly, it will be a great help for any Hebrew translator in future.

[Sterion]

The Danish translation is not complete at all.. It changes between Danish and English So i will say 5..

Anyways its nice that you make a Danish trnaslation anyway

GO FOR IT!!!!!!!!!

[sanna]

The Danish translation is not complete at all.. It changes between Danish and English So i will say 5..

This is to be expected for incomplete translations, if a certain string is not translated, the original is used instead. Danish is translated to 51.33%, as you can see at http://gettext.wesnoth.org

Anyways its nice that you make a Danish trnaslation anyway

GO FOR IT!!!!!!!!!

Unfortunately the Danish translation is stalled at the moment. Would you like to lend a hand? *smile*

/Sanna