Translators needed!

[planetmaker]

A lot of languages could need additional translator support. Please have a look at
http://translator.openttd.org/en/status
and consider to volunteer to help with the translation of OpenTTD if you're a native speaker of one of the languages marked with "need translator" (of course you're also welcome, if you want to help translating another language).

Visit http://translator.openttd.org and sign up and apply for your language.

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Why do I post this? Read
<planetmaker> TrueBrain, I think the word of dihedral that a forums thread might draw more attention could be somewhat true
<planetmaker> what is actually the definition of "needs translator"?
<TrueBrain> planetmaker: 0 translators or %done < 90%
<TrueBrain> planetmaker: so please make a forum thread
<TrueBrain> hihi
<planetmaker> ah, ok Sounds sensible

[dihedral]

You want to help? You cannot code? How about translating?

Translating with WT3 (WebTranslater v3) is making this job extremely easy, plus: you really get to help bringing the OpenTTD project forward.

patck packs are fun to play with, and a few members of the community do like them, too - however, they do not really add anything to this project!
OpenTTD already supports more than 50 languages, but what use is it, if nearly half of them still are in need of active translators?

translations are committed every day (before the new nightly is built) and translators are credited for the work they have done in the respective commit messages.
Please do consider playing OpenTTD in your native language, and help supporting this project by adding translations, fixing bad translations, and by making translations more consistent.



ps: even the US English needs translators

[ProDigit]

Unfortunately the only languages I consider myself well enough to at least understand the basic topic, are already 100% translated.
After English, Dutch, French, and German, I feel little confidence I can be of any help in translating to other languages, but perhaps,
have you guys tried to see if translate.google.com , freetranslation.com , and altavista.com/tr could help you out?

[planetmaker]

have you guys tried to see if translate.google.com , freetranslation.com , and altavista.com/tr could help you out?

Have you ever seen the quality of those translations?

[ProDigit]

It easily translates words, plus you can reverse translate it (back to English) to check up if the words are translated in the right way.
Those 3 translators are separate from each other, meaning some translators may make errors another translator can translate correctly.

But I suppose that this is the way most games get translated and end up on 80-90% completed, with just a few words that the web translators could not agree on left to be translated.

Well,at least those web translate services should be able to translate a big 60-70% of the game's words.

[Roujin]

errr... no. No, no, no. These translators are just so horrible, there are no words to describe it.

Take this guy for example: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?p=803115#p803115
He's using a web translator to translate his french into english. See how horrible it is? I have a hard time understanding what the heck he's trying to tell us. I wouldn't want to play a game translated with a lousy web translator. Translation is a job for humans. Period.

[dihedral]

those translate tools are a no go! and they are also mentioned to not be used in the requirements of being a translator.

[cmoiromain]

Automatic translators are pretty useful when it comes to vocabulary. I often need to find a word in english, and asking three or four translators to have the best translation is much quicker than going across the house to fetch a dictionnary.
However, for syntax, they go totally wrong. So for that we need to do it ourselves. Moreover, since people tend to neglect punctuation, some things become untranslatable.

A woman, without her man, is nothing.
A woman: without her, man is nothing.

[ProDigit]

Well, I suppose the guy did not reverse translate.
And I also suppose most things done on translation in games are words, and only a minority are sentences?
Besides, you can always reverse translate sentences from different translators, eg:
ENG to FIN on translate.google and then reverse translate for checkup FIN to ENG on altavista.com/tr

[Rubidium]

And ofcourse translating single words is the worst way of translating; the translator does not know the context, thus randomly guesses between one of the possibilities.

For example the word 'town'. In OpenTTD town means anything from hamlet to city. In this example I'm looking at Dutch translations.
Babelfish and freetranslation: translate it to stad, which is reverse translated to city. The better translation is plaats, which is reverse translated to place.
Google: gives 9 options, with stad at the top. Reverse translating that gives city, but town as possibility.

Then there's the word signal, none of the translators give the right translation. Whereas even the most stupid translator would figure out that it is 'sein' in Dutch. In this case google says it is 'signaal' in Dutch. Reverse translating that results in signal again, yet signaal is not the right translation.

So even when the translator tool reverse translates to the same word (even as one of the options) it does not prove AT ALL that the translation is even remotely correct.

These translator tools are a fairly useful when you want something from a language you don't know to something you know and you are aware that it is full of faults; on long pages you can usually make out the global structure and such. But the error rate is still fairly high.

Anyhow, for a translation of a game a faulty translation is MUCH worse than a missing translation.

So, yes you can use a translator tool to help you translating, but the results of the translator tool are usually wrong in one way or another. The human touch really is necessary.

Ergo: we will NEVER [1] use such translator tools to pre-translate a language; it makes it totally impossible to see what is and what isn't translated yet.

[1] Until translator tools translate better than humans, but that's still very far in the future.

[cmoiromain]

That's why I always look at different translators to chosethe right word. I'm fluent in english, only there's some vocabulary I don't know. Using the ethymology of the word I can find which one means which when there are multiple possibilities. If I still have a doubt, I search google for "train + [word]" and see which one comes out as the correct one.
But I agree there absolutely needs to be some human intervention at some point in the translation, to make sure everything actually has a meaning.
On the other hand, sometimes the human translation has weknesses. In OpenTTD (and in TTO as well), the translation for "goods" was "biens" at places, for example in the factories' output, and "marchandises" in town acceptances, in the vehicles lists and other places too. This made it difficult to understand, especially if you are a beginner and are lost among all those cargos. Even later, when using new industires grfs, that could lead to misunderstandings. The cause of the problem is that each of the words is correct, but each sounds better in certain sentenses, and the translators did not realise that they were using different words for the same thing.

(this was corrected some time ago, so it's no longer an issue)