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[Shelifon]

Disclaimer: sorry, if I won't be original with this proposal. Or if it is too naive/childish/stupid. But!
For now, AFAIK, Dwarf Fortress has only one language version: English. But even it's local Wikipedia has also French and Russian version.
Textual content in the game is rather big, but, as far as I see from the gaming process, not too huge to work with it. Theoretically I can translate it to Russian and/or Ukrainian without any special efforts. There will be a little problem because of case system of Slavic languages, but it can be solved.
But there is another, much bigger problem - my lack of any knowledge of technical side (I'm 100% humanist). I can translate plain text to plain text. Somebody has to explain to me, when I can get this text. Or give it to me, take the result and integrate it in the game.

Sorry, if I'm asking for something too difficult. I really don't imagine, how it works.

[kotekzot]

There's a whole bunch of grammar issues because of the differences between English and Russian, which would require significant effort to correct. More importantly, a lot of text is hard-coded into the game, so it's not easy to change. I don't think Toady's going to invest the time to expose any of that stuff in the foreseeable future. You could, probably, translate things such as material names, professions, and some lines spoken by creatures in Adventure mode.

Actually, when I think about it, translating it partially is probably not possible at the moment because there's no way to define additional characters in tilesets.

[Shelifon]

At least in Fortress mode grammar issues is not a big problem. There can be difficulties only whan it comes to, for example, interests of dwarves - sentences like "He like windows, obsidian, blah-blah-blah" require genetive case of "windows", "obsidian" and "blah-blah-blah". But it can be easily re-formulated to avoid such requirement. Example (Russian):
Урист Дварфович любит окна, обсидиан и кошек - genetive case.
Среди вещей, которые радуют Уриста Дварфовича, упоминания заслуживают окна, обсидиан и кошки. - nominative case, no problem at all.

But hard-coded names really can spoil all the fun. Is there technical possibility to avoid it or it require too much work from the developers/modemakers?

[kotekzot]

Well, from what I know, it seems the following is required for a proper translation:
1. Exposing the language engine to modders, so that it can be changed/replaced - significant.
2. Adding support for extended tilesets, to allow modders to bind specific characters to symbols - more or less significant.
3. Adding support for language-specific object names/descriptions/prefstrings in the raws, as well as the lines said in adventure mode - insignificant.

I believe that's one of the goals of the Presentation arc, but who can tell when its turn is going to come?

[Murphy]

Can't imagine how you'd translate the random naming. Maybe that is only because I'm not a native English speaker, but "Urist Diamondpants" sounds only mildly weird to me, while trying to think of a similar name in Russian is... disturbing.

And yes, localising a game requires much more work than, say, translating a book. Even with the developer's help. It's just not going to happen.

[Shelifon]

2 kotekzot - I got it. Too bad.

2 Murphy: by translation and summation word's roots. Урист Алмазштан.;-) Yep, sounds stupid - but no more, that "Diamondpants". Much easier for Ukrainian - Ukrainian tradition of name forming has same and even more exotic features - for example, Нетудишапка (Capnotthere) or Непийпиво (Don'tdrinkabeer) are normal Ukrainian surnames. Russian has similar tradition too (Cossack names), throught it is not so common.

[Murphy]

Nice one. Though there's still Cacame Apebalded
Also, I recall having totally no idea how to translate "Boatmurdered". And every other name of "noun-verb-ed" structure.

[kotekzot]

That's why you need the language engine exposed.

[Footkerchief]

It's a dev item:

# Core54, TRANSLATION SUPPORT, (Future): Announcements and other interface text needs to come out of the game and be placed in an editable format to support any potential translators, though current font implementations restrict this process at the moment if non-ASCII characters are to be involved.