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[Chthonic]

The funny thing about that is that a number of the game's random compound constructions (like "clasplashes") also sound very strange to a NES's ears.

[DennyTom]

Not sure if this has changed in newer versions, but you could translate at least language files, so the selected race would "use" the language (the grammar would be broken, but it is something).

I recall there were some translations, I myself did translation to Czech. It is uploaded somewhere on df file depot.

[therahedwig]

all code is in english(important code at least) therefore it makes sense for developers to go to english until the program is stable enough for the tinkering required.
besides, you are replying in english, what are you complaining about?

Internationalization =/= translation

Another problem with localising it would be the translation of certain terms.

Like, take the term Mountainhomes.

In Dutch that would become 'Bergthuis' which sounds really silly because it's singular(there's no specific multiple form for home in Dutch).
So you'd have to find an alternative. Like... 'Thuisgebergten' (Homemountains/Homemountainrange)
Or 'Berg gehucht'(MountainHamlet) 'Berg burchten'(Mountain Fortresses) 'Berg paleizen'(Mountain Palaces).

And not to even start on things like goblins and kobolds.(In the Dutch translation of Harry Potter the goblins at gringotts were translated as kobolds)

This isn't really Toady's problem, is it? It's the translators job!  Translation isn't transferring the text 1:1, it almost always includes making compromises, using different terms, coming up with your own words.

I know that proper localisation requires a bit of creativity. But as the anime-culture has shown us, there's a lot of people out there who think that if a word isn't a literal translation, it's a bad translation. Furthermore, you would want to have someone who is as fluent in the English language as well as the native language(seriously, I have seen some absolutely atrocious Dutch translations done by Dutch people), because otherwise the subtilities in the text are lost.

So the problem is not so much in Toady's hand as it is in the people who will translate it.

Though, when it comes to the generated text, I'm pretty certain most of it is composed out of static string with only some words replaced. Which means that in theory Toady just tells the computer that there is a string that goes 'This is a [quality] [medium] of [personname] the [race]' etcetera.

Ah, to Chthonic. The problem is not so much the lack of terms, but rather that English fantasy has certain standards and clichés associated with fantasy terms, while in other languages this is not as strong.
Like, take Artemis Fowl. There's Elves and Pixies and Fairies in that series. This doesn't translate well.This is mostly because language wise Pixie and Elf are synonyms in English and therefore also in the translations. So when translating it, the Author used 'Elven' and 'Elfjes'. The later is not only confusing because it's a dimunitive of the former, but also because it's the Dutch translation of Fairy. Fairies, in place, got named 'winged elves'(Which is double confusing because they could've used 'Fee' as well).

Similarly, there's the word Kabouter, which is best translated as pixie, but it's usually not done because people think of a carefree young looking creature with pixies, while kabouters are usually old, wise and bearded.

[Chthonic]

The standards and cliches are what I meant, though--in English, since the cliches exist, they're drawn upon and used as source material.  Elf and pixie are denotative synonyms, but their connotations--especially in-genre--are very different.  I don't know if it works this way exactly, but I would almost stick with the source-language terms in translating folkloric denizens, the way that in English language literature if a non-English-folklore supernatural entity is introduced, authors stick with the original name.

The English equivalent of your kabouter is definitely a gnome--not a D&D gnome, but the . . . garden variety, I guess

I don't envy translators their jobs--the introduction to my copy of The Inferno talks about how the translator had to not just preserve the literal and figurative meanings as best as possible, but also keep a sense of the poetry--the stresses and meter.  It's almost like composing an entirely new poem (or novel) if it's done well.  Lot of creativity.

[teloft]

I18n ( = Internationalization) of DF permit development of non-english communities(japanese, french, german, russian etc..)

I think this sould be easy to do, simply to but the menues txt and stuff like that with the raw files so that thay can be edited easely for any reason.  Perhaps the goblin mod likes to change a few menue names or something.

I would put this to medium priority, I would say that it is more important then for example let Mac using people play the game.

[Grendus]

Who cares about mac users, right.

Personally, I think the bulk of this could be done fairly soon (let's get most of the major bugs worked out of 2010 before undertaking something this ambitious) depending on how Toady handles it. If you simply export the generic nomenclature to text files, a crude form could be worked out by simply having the computer read in the strings and menu settings. You would still run into some nasty grammar issues, of course, but it would be a start. It would beat having to translate it yourself.

[Yolan]

Yeah, only thing that is stopping me from playing DF right now is that I'm in full time Japanese immersion mode (6 months in and counting). It would be great to have a way to translate DF into Japanese. I'm sure it would become v. popular and result in a lot more donations.

There is already awareness on the J. internets....

http://pcgamerslog.blog47.fc2.com/blog-entry-24.html
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/inziladun/20070426/1177522123


"我々は、歴史に残る偉大なゲームの誕生に立ち会っているのかもしれない。"
We may well be looking at the birth of a game that will go down in history.


From the sounds of it translating would not be at all an easy job, and maybe making the conversion to any particular language would require some years of labor from numerous individuals. That said, DF is a game that is worth it. It attracts the kind of devotion required for such effort. The question is, could Toady find a way to make this possible for other people to attempt as some kind of mod.

[Socializator]

I agree with people saying that general knowledge of English wont help you much when playing a DF. Menus are flooded with very uncommon words. I think it may really present a barrier for lot of people (read: potential donators).
I understand that there is lot of dynamically generated stuff, but I assume there are some "quick wins" around in the code (e.g. text in the menus, materials, items). Just make them public and community will do the rest...
But not that I personally really care, I can play it know (after some battle with dictionaries) and community size is not really my business...

[Captain Mayday]

I think this would be a great idea, although I believe that it's best to wait until the presentation arc is being focused on to handle this.

[Patchouli]

In light of the TrueType upgrade, would that make kana and other strange characters possibly usable in menus now? I think besides grammatical issues, the character limit was problematic as well, but is it still an issue now?

In my opinion, the only things that really need to be translated for an expanded audience are the more "static" text, like designation menus and such, that don't rely on grammatical structure much. For the most part, there's not a whole lot of text in dwarf that explicitly describe what an item is for or how it's used - most of that information is found in the wiki, which has appeared in other languages already.

[G-Flex]

I'm not sure how much this has been mentioned:

DF synthesizes sentences in the creature descriptions, combat reports, and many other places. Because of this, it needs to know grammar, and localizing DF for another language would require localizing those rules as well. Obviously, you don't cut-and-paste together a sentence in English the same as you would in French, Russian, Czech, or any other language. Because of this (and other reasons, like so much of the language/text being hard-coded into the game), localizing the game would be a big programming job, and I'm not sure Toady would want to do that at this point, considering how much the game itself keeps changing.

In my opinion, the only things that really need to be translated for an expanded audience are the more "static" text, like designation menus and such, that don't rely on grammatical structure much. For the most part, there's not a whole lot of text in dwarf that explicitly describe what an item is for or how it's used - most of that information is found in the wiki, which has appeared in other languages already.

The game relies on dynamic text now more than ever, and will likely continue in that direction. See: Combat reports, wound and other descriptions, etc.

[Jake]

In light of the TrueType upgrade, would that make kana and other strange characters possibly usable in menus now? I think besides grammatical issues, the character limit was problematic as well, but is it still an issue now?

Possibly. It depends whether or not the menu text is hard-coded or in a lookup table that could be turned into another .txt file in the init folder somewhere.
I'd be surprised if the contents of the speech folder couldn't already display properly if translated into Greek or Cryllic as of the latest version, however; it would be almost as easy to add unicode support as it would to leave it out.

[Patchouli]

The game relies on dynamic text now more than ever, and will likely continue in that direction. See: Combat reports, wound and other descriptions, etc.

While the game is definitely moving toward dynamic texts, a lot of that is flavor, and the bare basics are mostly static. You're probably right in that combat reports look like they'll have to remain in english. But in regards to the wound screen and creature flavor text, a lot of that can be edited via raws, in addition to noble positions, creature names, body parts, metals, layers, toys, equipment, plants, and some reactions.

You'll be left with weird stuff like "You hack 'foreign word' 1 in the 'foreign word' with your 'foreign word', and the severed part sails off in an arc!" making some weird mad-lib situation, but I think it's at least more accessible than having everything in english. I honestly think that just the barebones of the menu need to be translated to attract a much wider audience, and a lot of the text can be left in english, but that might be a poor guess to make, and I can see why you don't really want to half-ass it.

[MagmaMcFry]

The best way to translate DF is probably to export all the text and grammar to raws and let the fan community handle the rest.

[G-Flex]

The game relies on dynamic text now more than ever, and will likely continue in that direction. See: Combat reports, wound and other descriptions, etc.

While the game is definitely moving toward dynamic texts, a lot of that is flavor, and the bare basics are mostly static. You're probably right in that combat reports look like they'll have to remain in english. But in regards to the wound screen and creature flavor text, a lot of that can be edited via raws, in addition to noble positions, creature names, body parts, metals, layers, toys, equipment, plants, and some reactions.

You can't edit anything about wounds in the raws, at all. Except maybe the names of a few token things. And the grammar still won't make any sense at all.