I costed a few days to fill the Chinese (Simplified) translation of Xonotic. (in Transifex)
I've made it to ~97% >99%, only some rare key identifiers (like LEFT_THUMB) left there.
It's tested here & I'm confident about the quality.
While in my way of progress, I've found difficulty about how it's done.
It applies to the entire "infrastructure", more or less.
In a word, it's that Translation quality still can't be kept.
Let me try to tell, and provide my suggestion.
There is guideline in GitLab docs.
In which it clearly stated: do not risk adding an improper translation
But the opposite truly hit my eyes: I had the pain to deal with all the wrong translations, before I work on there are roughly 40% 45% (of the 56% "translated") of such.
Examples:
(But, let's be optimist, the good translations left there saved lots of effort, and are beautiful indeed)
So, I have idea about dedicated guidelines per language team:
(Well, of course, many of these are about Chinese grammar & CJK text, and I'd write in Chinese if I "formally" make this guideline. Try to find what's special in your language.)
(Sadly, my GitLab account is "blocked" (mean entire GitLab). That isn't tasty at all, and I can't make code/doc contributions that way.)
That's it. And I'm waiting for a new game release, to include better translations and give more fun
.po file attached in the zip below for testing, extract & put to "~/.xonotic/data/", then start & enable in game.
3 updates so far:
- translated some bit more
- fixed mis-translation of "drop" (of previous people), other minor refinements
- fixed bunch of mis-translations of server info related strings (of previous people. Aaarrrgh!)
I've made it to ~97% >99%, only some rare key identifiers (like LEFT_THUMB) left there.
It's tested here & I'm confident about the quality.
While in my way of progress, I've found difficulty about how it's done.
It applies to the entire "infrastructure", more or less.
In a word, it's that Translation quality still can't be kept.
Let me try to tell, and provide my suggestion.
There is guideline in GitLab docs.
In which it clearly stated: do not risk adding an improper translation
But the opposite truly hit my eyes: I had the pain to deal with all the wrong translations, before I work on there are roughly 40% 45% (of the 56% "translated") of such.
Examples:
Code:
- "cells" (电池), the ammo of Crylink etc., being translated to "细胞" (yeah, what a creature's body consists of)
- "item" (物品), be it health bag or armor, being repeatedly translated to a super abstract meaning "项目" (to mean like what in your to-do list, or a totally different concept "project")
- "remove" (移除) became "删除" ("delete"), as if you are going to delete your maps completely from disk
- Mistakes like regard "Nade" as "Node", along with some mysterious transliterations
- Messed up "capture" of flags (夺取) and "capture" of control points (占领)
- Very weird grammar, incorrect/annoying/distracting sentence order. Suspect machine translators?
- Pretty much there. Nevermind.
(But, let's be optimist, the good translations left there saved lots of effort, and are beautiful indeed)
So, I have idea about dedicated guidelines per language team:
- Every team could have a guideline page, which is flexible to update, to be used to progressively address & note down the ideas/tips/tricks/problems the members found, to serve a base of consistency and future housekeeping among other members.
- When member do translation, read the guideline of their team. If there isn't one yet, write one by/for themself.
- And don't overlook this "self management", it should be sufficient to prevent many of the potential pitfalls -- Good translator accepts it naturally, while bad one couldn't/shouldn't take the job in the first place.
Code:
- ... (intro first)
- ... (let read official guideline)
- Understand some essential terms/acronym well before starting, like "frag" "capture" "ctf" etc.
- Try to don't use a machine translator. Search words with a good dictionary, and trust yourself.
- Think twice about words:
- Use correct nouns, e.g. "cells" is kind of ammo that powers up electricity themed weapons, not biological thing
- Use correct verbs: e.g. know which "capture" to say when see "capture flags" versus "capture control points"
- ... (more terms, maybe link to another section/page)
- If in doubt, play the game & feel it, search through existing translations, read the source code, or just leave a question
- Get grammar right:
- Swap the sentence order with intelligence, thinking you are telling a native player about what's going on, not a machine translator/validator, and not a school teacher either
- ...
- Tips & Tricks:
- Some strings are "gentle" versions, like "score against" versus "frag". Try to don't use harsh language when translating them.
- Pay attention to spaces around placeholders, leave spaces between numbers / player names, and don't leave one between weapon / team / place names
- Keep symbols symmetric, pair full-width or half-width parenthesis right
- Try to keep it brief in Scoreboard titles (source strings are prefixed with "SCO^"), like "SCO^dmgtaken" to "受伤" and not "受到的总伤害"
- Strings like "%senemy^BG" "%steam^BG" means to color the word dynamically. Preserve it like "%s敌人^BG" "%s队伍^BG"
- ... (pretty much more appeared to be vital in my way of progress)
(Well, of course, many of these are about Chinese grammar & CJK text, and I'd write in Chinese if I "formally" make this guideline. Try to find what's special in your language.)
(Sadly, my GitLab account is "blocked" (mean entire GitLab). That isn't tasty at all, and I can't make code/doc contributions that way.)
That's it. And I'm waiting for a new game release, to include better translations and give more fun

.po file attached in the zip below for testing, extract & put to "~/.xonotic/data/", then start & enable in game.
3 updates so far:
- translated some bit more
- fixed mis-translation of "drop" (of previous people), other minor refinements
- fixed bunch of mis-translations of server info related strings (of previous people. Aaarrrgh!)