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Author Topic: Translating the game  (Read 612 times)

Alarion

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Translating the game
« on: January 16, 2010, 04:30:41 pm »

So... long time reader, first time poster and all that. Anyway - I recently took up the game again after a few month's hiatus - and MAN do I like it! I'm still on my first fort, which has survived for a decade now and has 120+ dwarfs (and a human siege outside... :P) and yet I've already tried exploratory mining, making deathtraps for invaders, attacking evil carp and trying to drain the river, until I discovered it flowed in the other direction and my dam was thus in the wrong place :P

Anyway, my post is about translations. And by that, I mean - is it possible to make a complete translation of the game into another language, say, Swedish (my mother tongue :P), or at least part of the text? And I don't mean just names for objects as in Elvish or English or whatever, but the actual things - like how names are generated, descriptions of items, personalities, names of objects and menus and maps... Would that be possible? I'd like to try, but I don't seem to uncover much in this sense - is it because nobody has tried or because it won't work (hardcoded?) =/ ? Because I'd like to at least try to see what happens. I know it has been done with Diablo and other such games, and since it's only about modifying text files (I think? :S) it should be easy, right? Or at the very least Fun :p

Lemme know what you think ^^

//Al
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Jay

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Re: Translating the game
« Reply #1 on: January 16, 2010, 04:38:33 pm »

Only if Toady opens up the text strings for that.

As of right now, no.
Beyond that, I'm not sure how much of the descriptive paragraphs would really translate very well...
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ed boy

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Re: Translating the game
« Reply #2 on: January 16, 2010, 05:35:19 pm »

It should be possible to translate it.

Firstly, one can go through the folders in the game (the raws and all the subfolders in the data folder) and translate them.

Secondly, Have at look at this:
http://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/String_dump

From what I can tell, it appears that someone opened the DF executable with a hex editor and exported all the intelligible text.

What you should be able to do is translate and replace each individual line.

Of course, It'll probably be best if you contact toady before undertaking such a project.

And you will probably want to wait for the next version before translating.
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Deon

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Re: Translating the game
« Reply #3 on: January 16, 2010, 05:45:48 pm »

No. Every thing there has a "reserved" type of bytes for each word and you cannot do it better as far as I know. So I was able to turn "smelter" into "reactor", but I didn't see a way to make it longer.

Also you won't be able to change the way the phrases are built, so it's not a good idea either.

There is a mark in dev.features for the future which will allow translations, but it's not in a near future.
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Alarion

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Re: Translating the game
« Reply #4 on: January 16, 2010, 05:49:13 pm »

Alright. I was just wondering :P

but I'll look into it when it happens around, I was just wondering if it was possible ^^

Thanks all :)
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Death shall sow, and summer burn, before the Great Lord comes.
Death shall reap, and bodies fail, before the Great Lord comes.
Now the Great Lord comes. Now the Great Lord comes.
Blood feeds blood. Blood calls blood. Blood is, and blood was, and blood shall ever be.
Now the Great Lord comes.

Deon

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Re: Translating the game
« Reply #5 on: January 16, 2010, 05:55:42 pm »

Yeah, I will look into it when it happens around. In 5 or 10 years ::).
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