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[yarm102]

I've decided I am going to mod the language files so that they represent actual european languages. I am in the process of transforming the Human language into German. I look forward to seeing the results.

I am thinking of creating several different types of humans, elves, dorfs and so forth which will have preferences for certain zones and which will speak certain languages.

Elves will speak more archaic languages (at least older versions of ones still extant), preferably ones from antiquity or ones which are associated with arcane knowledge (given that they are supposed to represent a level of civilisation above that of humans, albeit in decline, like the romans and greeks of east/west rome and the old city states). Dwarves will speak one dialect of a language (from a more commercially successful country, like Dutch where the humans speak German), and humans another.

Goblins will speak another version, or they could speak entirely different languages. People might object if theirs is the language the goblins speak though, so maybe another dialect of the same language group would be appropriate.

Question: Is this feasible? if it is, i know it will mean a lot of work. I am reliant upon Google, by and large, as well, and I am not going to put in a lot of work on Syntax, at least not initially. I think that it will look funny, though.

"The image relates to the ascension of Stein Drachelicht to the post of Mayor in the town of Furchtbarholz, a local Zwerg community"

Cold/Frozen Temperate (Scandinavian theme)

Elves: Old Norse/Icelandic (Finnish?)
Dwarves: Danish
Humans: Norweigian
Goblins: Swedish (Finnish? Russian?)

Temperate (HRE/Germany theme)

Elves: Welsh? Gaelic?
Dwarves: Dutch
Humans: German
Goblins: Afrikaans (I am South African, so offended afrikaners, please spare me your ire

Warm Temperate (Latin/Western Empire theme)

Elves: Latin
Dwarves: Italian
Humans: French
Goblins: (Spanish? Romanian?)

Warm Tropical (Balkan/Byzantine theme)

Elves: Greek
Dwarves: Croatian
Humans: Serb
Goblins: (Bulgarian? Turkish?)

This is just a thought on where i'd take this if I started down the long road of actually creating a mod. I have already created an elven civ which isn't too fussed about ethics and what have you, and they kick ass and take names. I enjoyed being able to mod the game in that way and I fancy a challenge.

Thoughts?

ADDS: per the suggestion of others, the d/l links for the half completed mod can be found in this post.

Full mod (plus entity changes and modded creatures)

Language files only version (spot the typo)

I have included a README in both versions.

[Creamcorn]

Sounds cool, there's never really that many langugae mods in this game.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Do something with Japanese. That ought to be fun to read.

[Wahad]

I can help you with Dutch, and French to a certain extent, if you want.

[Jakkarra]

Id do the goblins as Klingon. (it IS a language)

the humies as german, yeah.

Elves as Chinese.

Dwarves as Dutch.

yes, no?

love, jakkarra

[jaked122]

I've decided I am going to mod the language files so that they represent actual european languages. I am in the process of transforming the Human language into German. I look forward to seeing the results.

I am thinking of creating several different types of humans, elves, dorfs and so forth which will have preferences for certain zones and which will speak certain languages.

Elves will speak more archaic languages (at least older versions of ones still extant), preferably ones from antiquity or ones which are associated with arcane knowledge (given that they are supposed to represent a level of civilisation above that of humans, albeit in decline, like the romans and greeks of east/west rome and the old city states). Dwarves will speak one dialect of a language (from a more commercially successful country, like Dutch where the humans speak German), and humans another.

Goblins will speak another version, or they could speak entirely different languages. People might object if theirs is the language the goblins speak though, so maybe another dialect of the same language group would be appropriate.

Question: Is this feasible? if it is, i know it will mean a lot of work. I am reliant upon Google, by and large, as well, and I am not going to put in a lot of work on Syntax, at least not initially. I think that it will look funny, though.

"The image relates to the ascension of Stein Drachelicht to the post of Mayor in the town of Furchtbarholz, a local Zwerg community"

Cold/Frozen Temperate (Scandinavian theme)

Elves: Old Norse/Icelandic (Finnish?)
Dwarves: Danish
Humans: Norweigian
Goblins: Swedish (Finnish? Russian?)

Temperate (HRE/Germany theme)

Elves: Welsh? Gaelic?
Dwarves: Dutch
Humans: German
Goblins: Afrikaans (I am South African, so offended afrikaners, please spare me your ire

Warm Temperate (Latin/Western Empire theme)

Elves: Latin
Dwarves: Italian
Humans: French
Goblins: (Spanish? Romanian?)

Warm Tropical (Balkan/Byzantine theme)

Elves: Greek
Dwarves: Croatian
Humans: Serb
Goblins: (Bulgarian? Turkish?)

This is just a thought on where i'd take this if I started down the long road of actually creating a mod. I have already created an elven civ which isn't too fussed about ethics and what have you, and they kick ass and take names. I enjoyed being able to mod the game in that way and I fancy a challenge.

Thoughts?

elves should speak mongolian, they're no more civil than khangis khan

[yarm102]

preliminary results are hilarious, having partially done the humans (in german) and the dwarves (in dutch)

i have had towns called "Heiligefrosch" and "Liebefinger". Personally, i would LOVE to live in a town called Holyfrog or Lovefinger.

[Deon]

Hey! I need language files for my DFComPlete mod. I've made humans into subraces ("common" humans (europeoid-type), nippon (japanese+some chinese items) and norse (nords/vikings cliche)); and I plan to work on arabian subrace when I finish a graphical set for arabians.

The question is, may you share some languages to make different humans to SOUND different, not only using different items and descriptions? If you manage to create some old norse or japanese or arabian-like language, I hope you will contribute and I will include you in credits as a major contributor . Because it's a lot of routine work, and I don't have time currently to make it by myself.

[Volfram]

Well, I know what I'm doing tonight.

Congratulations.  Thanks to you, DF is now not only a geology primer, it also teaches foreign languages.

A few more good ideas like this, and Toady may become the developer of the best edutainment package known to man!

[yarm102]

Hey! I need language files for my DFComPlete mod. I've made humans into subraces ("common" humans (europeoid-type), nippon (japanese+some chinese items) and norse (nords/vikings cliche)); and I plan to work on arabian subrace when I finish a graphical set for arabians.

The question is, may you share some languages to make different humans to SOUND different, not only using different items and descriptions? If you manage to create some old norse or japanese or arabian-like language, I hope you will contribute and I will include you in credits as a major contributor . Because it's a lot of routine work, and I don't have time currently to make it by myself.

it does take ages to do. there are hundreds of words in each file. doing the germanic/HRE languages now. i want to finish these and test some of the syntax and other options out first. things like creating a placename and proper name group in the languages_sym file, for example, and then modding the corresponding entities to see if they work. lots of donkey work.

and yeah, when i have something to upload, you're welcome to cherry pick what you want.

[yarm102]

UPDATE: I have completed the German language file for the humans, partially done the Dutch language file for the dwarves, and have found a way of having proper names. At the present time, humans have names like Eberhard, Claus, Nicholas, Ingo, Hermann, Engelbert and Heiko (have only done to the letter "i" for proper names).

Have also added dark elf (evil), gremlin (skulking), mountain gnome (skulking), dark gnome (skulking), elven (plains) and hobgoblin (evil) civs. The elves have been renamed to wood elves, the backward, wood-humping weirdoes. even Tolkein elves thought wood elves were 'tards.

Now that I know how to add proper names, i want to see if I can add logical placenames (adjective + geographical noun), and then I can complete the language files (which take ages).

ADDS: if you want to have a look, here we are: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=P3K7MMIH

It's literally a .rar of the modfied raw/objects folder. simply overwrite the existing one (after backing up, of course).

[charl]

A Nordic perspective on your Scandinavian theme: Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are very, very similar to each other. Your humans/dwarves/goblins will be speaking essentially different dialects of the same language. I would propose something more like this:
Elves: Finnish (a tribute to Tolkien, who based his Elven grammar on Finnish).
Dwarves: Danish/Norwegian/Swedish (pick one, I would propose Danish as they seem to be the most dwarf-like of Scandinavians, but don't listen to me: I'm Swedish and partial)
Humans: Icelandic
Goblins: Russian

OR, instead of using Russian for the Goblins, give them Finnish and give the Elves a Sami language, if you can find information on it. That would fill the whole archaic feel you wanted as well, since the Sami languages is as I understand it not very changed from ancient times, plus they have an association with mysteries and magic and stuff like that, at least to the non-Sami majority in Scandinavia.

[Lav]

My 5 cents.

IMHO producing language files for different real languages is an interesting task in itself.

The question of what race should speak each language... I don't really care. If I have an entire repository of language_ENG, language_GRE, language_JAP, language_RUS and so on, I can always assign languages to races as I see fit.

So... if such a project starts, I'm willing to provide a Russian language pack. I can also try Japanese, though my knowledge here is really amateurish and there are probably better candidates than me.

[DaveT]

Righto, I've just finished my finals and this has caught my interest. I haven't the faintest idea whether this will be useful to anyone else but I have written two python functions to convert a language file to a csv file and to convert the csv files back to language files. Personally I am planning to use this and create language files for Welsh, Latin and Ancient Greek. Figured doing them as csv files would be easier as I can edit them in a spreadsheet of some sort.

If anyone else is interested in doing some languages and isn't sure how to run these modules then post here (and if I don't reply within a day or so pm me). I reckon it could turn out quite interesting although I'm not going to get into the holy war over what races should be which languages.

Incidentally, if you will use it and you want the scripts to do something more ask and I'll see whether I think its feasible.

Cheers

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
# Name: lang_file_to_csv                                                       #
#                                                                              #
# Returns: Nothing.                                                            #
#                                                                              #
# Purpose: Convert dwarf fortress language files into csv files for importing  #
#          into spreadsheet software.                                          #
#                                                                              #
# Arguments: filename - A string containing the filename of the language file. #
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
def lang_file_to_csv(filename):
  found_creature_header = False
  found_object_header = False
  found_begin_translation = False
 
  lang_file_in = open(filename, 'r')
  lang_file_out = open(filename.replace("txt","csv"), 'w')

  #----------------------------------------------------------------------------#
  # Loop through the input file parsing the language into a comma seperated    #
  # file for importing to spreadsheet software.                                #
  #----------------------------------------------------------------------------#
  for line in lang_file_in:
    line = line.replace('\n', '').replace('\r', '').replace('\t','')
   
    #--------------------------------------------------------------------------#
    # The first line in the file should be language_%CREATURE%.                #
    #--------------------------------------------------------------------------#
    if line.find("language_") == 0:
      if not found_creature_header:
        found_creature_header = True
      else:
        print "The language file is corrupt: Two creature header found."
        return
     
      creature = line.replace("language_", '')
      lang_file_out.write(creature + '\n')
    #--------------------------------------------------------------------------#
    # The next non-blank line should contain only [OBJECT:LANGUAGE].           #
    #--------------------------------------------------------------------------#
    elif line.find("[OBJECT:LANGUAGE]") == 0:
      if not found_creature_header:
        print "The language file is corrupt: No creature header found."
        return
      elif not found_object_header:
        found_object_header = True
      else:
        print "The language file is corrupt: Two object headers found."
        return
    #--------------------------------------------------------------------------#
    # The next non-blank line should contain [TRANSLATION:%CREATURE%].         #
    #--------------------------------------------------------------------------#
    elif line.find("[TRANSLATION:" + creature + ']') == 0:
      if not found_creature_header:
        print "The language file is corrupt: No creature header found."
        return
      elif not found_object_header:
        print "The language file is corrupt: No object header found."
        return
      elif not found_begin_translation:
        found_begin_translation = True
      else:
        print "The language file is corrupt: Two translation headers found."
        return
    #--------------------------------------------------------------------------#
    # Lines which begin [T_WORD: contain the english word then the word in the #
    # new language seperated by a colon. We strip these out and output them to #
    # the output file as the english word followed by the creature words with  #
    # a comma seperating them.                                                 #
    #--------------------------------------------------------------------------#
    elif line.find("[T_WORD:") == 0:
      word_string = line.replace("[T_WORD:", '')
      word_string = word_string.replace(']', '')
      (eng_word,seperator,creature_word) = word_string.partition(':')
     
      lang_file_out.write(eng_word + ',' + creature_word + '\n')
     
    else:
      print line
     
  #----------------------------------------------------------------------------#
  # Close the files.                                                           #
  #----------------------------------------------------------------------------#
  lang_file_in.close()
  lang_file_out.close()

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
# Name: lang_file_to_csv                                                       #
#                                                                              #
# Returns: Nothing.                                                            #
#                                                                              #
# Purpose: Convert dwarf fortress language files into csv files for importing  #
#          into spreadsheet software.                                          #
#                                                                              #
# Arguments: filename - A string containing the filename of the language file. #
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------#
def csv_to_lang_file(filename):
  found_creature_header = False
 
  lang_file_in = open(filename, 'r')
 
  for line in lang_file_in: 
    #--------------------------------------------------------------------------#
    # Strip out any characters we are not interested in from the line. In      #
    # particular this means we remove new line characters.                     #
    #--------------------------------------------------------------------------#
    line = line.replace('\n', '').replace('\r', '').replace('\t','')
   
    #--------------------------------------------------------------------------#
    # No sanity checking is done on the first line, we simply assume it will   #
    # be the creature name.                                                    #
    #--------------------------------------------------------------------------#
    if not found_creature_header:
      creature = line
      found_creature_header = True
     
      #------------------------------------------------------------------------#
      # Use this creature name to write the first 5 lines of the new language  #
      # file.                                                                  #
      #------------------------------------------------------------------------#
      lang_file_out = open("language_" + creature + ".txt", 'w')
      lang_file_out.write("language_" + creature + '\n')
      lang_file_out.write('\n')
      lang_file_out.write("[OBJECT:LANGUAGE]\n")
      lang_file_out.write('\n')
      lang_file_out.write("[TRANSLATION:" + creature + "]\n")
    else:
      #------------------------------------------------------------------------#
      # If this is not the first line then it should consist of two words, the #
      # english word and the translated word with a comma seperating them.     #
      #------------------------------------------------------------------------#
      (english_word, translated_word) = line.split(',', 1)
     
      #------------------------------------------------------------------------#
      # Write this word pair back to the output file in the correct format.    #
      # i.e. [T_WORD:%english_word%:%translated_word%]                         #
      #------------------------------------------------------------------------#
      lang_file_out.write("\t[T_WORD:" + english_word.strip() + ':' +
                                                translated_word.strip() + "]\n")
     
  #----------------------------------------------------------------------------#
  # Close both files.
  #----------------------------------------------------------------------------#
  lang_file_in.close()
  lang_file_out.close()
 

[yarm102]

anything to make the job easier would be good.

my idea is gradually turning from doing languages assigned to particular races to doing languages, and leaving it to the player to assign languages to races as he/she sees fit.

i have done the german, partial dutch, but as i am moving flats, i have not been able to make any further headway. i have also added in first names (but have yet to figure out how to make them gender dependent).

doing the germanic languages atm as my knowledge of english, dutch and afrikaans means i have a something approaching a handle on that language group and can make more intelligent translation decisions, whereas other languages would end up with hilarious results (not that this is a bad thing  ).