Translations

[Mati256]

Hello, I know English is the international language and all but it would be great if game creators (specially those selling their games) would be willing to translate their creations. I do understand that paying a translator might be out of budget and nobody will translate for free a payed game.
Germany is (or was) a great market for adventure games. Also I know myself a lot of Spanish speaking people who doesn't play adventure games if they are not in Spanish.
Being able to understand what you have to do is really important in adventure games (not like in FPS).
There is a Portuguese game made in AGS, I didn't played it because I don´t really understand Portuguese. Have you played it? Did you enjoyed it the way you would had if it was in English?
For the non-English speaking is the same way with adventures in English, they don´t have a clue of what to do so they can't play the game.
I think translating their games designers will reach a wider audience.

Any toughs on this?

[arj0n]

My opinion for freeware AGS games:
I think that the urge of finally releasing a game is more important to lots of AGS game-creators then to wait some more time and add one or more translations...
Specially when it's their first game.
Also, you will have to find a translator that is good enough and does have the time to do the job.
It would be great if at least all non-english ags games would have an english translation.

[Baron]

The French AGS were on a kick for a while translating games into French.  They asked me for the translation file of Besieged and I happily gave it to them, and then when they came back with the translation I recompiled for them -they scanned for errors, made a few edits, I re-recompiled and now they distribute the translated game from their site, which I am entirely cool with.  The whole process took maybe an hour on my part (mostly to make sure the translated text still fit on my GUI labels), which is a drop in the bucket in terms of game making, and I was happy to do it since fans obviously thought enough of the game to ask to do many many hours of translation work on my project. 
     Now obviously no one is going to volunteer to do free translating for a commercial game, but maybe for a free demo or prequel to a commercial game.  Consider approaching a commercial author to translate their demo and see if they can keep track of downloads through a separate portal.  Comparing download counts of, say, a Spanish translation to the English version should give the developer a rough idea of how big the Spanish market is compared to the English market for the commercial version (it's just a ratio comparison).  If you raise some eyebrows you might scare yourself up some paid translation work.  Just a thought.

[zabnat]

Also note that translating a game might not be an easy task. Escpecially if a good portion of the games appeal is based on the dialog. There may be some funny puns or some other kind of word play. If the author doesn't know the language the game is translated to, then the translator must be someone the author fully trusts to ensure that the quality of the translated game matches the original.

[Radiant]

I think translating their games designers will reach a wider audience.

Any toughs on this?

Yes, I agree.

[cat]

So, how many people do play games in a translated language? I usually play games in English, even if there is a German translation. The only exception is when the author is a native German speaker, then I choose German. I prefer to play games in the original language.

What are your experiences with translations? Are they actually used by players?

[Matti]

I usually play games in English, even if there is a German translation. The only exception is when the author is a native German speaker, then I choose German. I prefer to play games in the original language.

Yeah, same here.

This is also the case with movies and television series. They always suffer a lot from translation, a good example are the Simpsons where most of the funny dialects are completely absent, most wordplays are gone and some sentences don't even make sense at all.

[Unai]

Well, most german people speak good english, but english level in spain is pretty poor (as you have seen MANY times in this forum). So a translation is usually good for people that can't speak english too well and will lost most jokes in translation.

Also, games with a heavy use of slang should to be translated, or the ones with a lot of technical words.

[paolo]

Just my thoughts as someone who has translated quite a few AGS games. For the most part, I've done translations into English. I have translated a couple of games into French or Italian, but the audience for these is usually much smaller than games translated into English, so without the demand, it's questionable whether this is worth the effort. (I doubt that many people here have played Trance-Pacific in French or Italian, for example.)

Also note that translating a game might not be an easy task.

You can say that again. There is a lot more too it than looking up the occasional word you aren't familiar with in a dictionary. However, that's not a reason not to translate a game if there is enough demand for it.

I think that the urge of finally releasing a game is more important to lots of AGS game-creators then to wait some more time and add one or more translations...

True, but translations can be added later on - the files can be released separately without any need to change the game executable.

I think that non-English speakers were more forthright in demanding translations of games into their own language, we might see more translations being made.

Doesn't "A Second Face" have translations into about 7 languages or something? "A Second Face" has 4 translations (English [the original language is German], Italian, Polish and Spanish). That's not the record-holder - it looks like Radiant's games might hold that distinction. (Radiant, if you'd like a versione italiana of your games, let me know...  )

[m0ds]

My 2 cents: Translations are very important if you want a wider audience. Providing you have a tempting game, you won't have any problems finding translators for free. Particularly big/long games may require more than one person working on a translation though. Also, incorporating it all into AGS can - from what I've been told - be a total bitch. Our FoY demo has been translated into roughly 6 languages, HOWEVER, we've only released one translation (Dutch) because it's the implementing it back into AGS that is time consuming. At least, it was back in 2006/7 - I don't know if newer versions have made it easier.

I'm English, and if a game comes out in French or German - I won't play it, cos I won't understand it. I'm sure that goes for a lot of other people, too, whatever their mother tongue. English is "best bet" at a wider audience altogether. But taking the time to translate into other languages is only going to do your product good, and increase its popularity.

Germany and Spain aside, Italy is a massive adventure gaming community as is Russia. And it's not often you find translations into those languages.

[paolo]

HOWEVER, we've only released one translation (Dutch) because it's the implementing it back into AGS that is time consuming. At least, it was back in 2006/7 - I don't know if newer versions have made it easier.

It's dead easy now, and has been for a while. AGS generates a .trs file that lists all of the game text that is visible to the user, with blank lines between each piece of text and the next. The translator fills in the blank lines with their translations. AGS compiles the completed file into a .tra file, which you release with the game. The user selects the game language from setup.exe, and the game then translates text as it goes along.

[zabnat]

Yes paolo, but additional work is required if some fancy tricks are used to generate dialog. Like for example when looking at something character says "It's a/an [itemnamehere]." And the script decides the indefinite article based on what item player is looking.

[Anian]

Bottom line, most people (that play games) know english as a first, second or third langauge, so they can mostly understand (even if you don't understand everything in text, there's music and pictures to help). So if you like make a game in your own langauge, but also make it in english (and if you don't know enough english, then ask somebody to help out).

I mean, if you make a really good game and it doesn't have an english version, probably 90% of people at least on this forum (and these are the people that are interested in AGS games the most after all) won't play your game. It is not a question of national pride, no matter if you're Russian, French, German, Italian or from Spain, you gotta face a fact - you're language is not that important in the world that everybody knows it. Everything is served to this nations on a platter, everything from, books, movies and videogames is translated in your langauge and you get this false sense that the whole world uses your languge, THAT IS NOT TRUE.

English is rather simple to get the basics of, it doesn't have unusual letters and is native to AGS itself, so you can be sure it's compatible. Don't do it in english and you'll lose a lot of publicity and gamers. Simple as that, if you don't want to make an english translation, then don't make it in english.

[Mati256]

Bottom line, most people (that play games) know english as a first, second or third langauge, so they can mostly understand (even if you don't understand everything in text, there's music and pictures to help).

Of course, with a FPS that's easy, but when you are facing a dialog puzzle then you need to know what they are talking about.
When you aim for a high end product, translation is only an enhancement. You can reach a wider audience as Mods said.

[Radiant]

I find the most time-consuming part of importing translations is having to install various fonts to make room for all the accented letters. Also, while it's easy to find a volunteer for a translation, it's somewhat less easy to find one who'll produce good quality and finish the job. I'd say you need to be a native or near-native speaker to translate a game to that language.

[paolo]

Yes paolo, but additional work is required if some fancy tricks are used to generate dialog. Like for example when looking at something character says "It's a/an [itemnamehere]." And the script decides the indefinite article based on what item player is looking.

Ah, I see what you mean. I'd forgotten about that.

Another problem is when the same word is used in the source language for two different objects or items that have different names in the target language. For example, in Italian, "vaso" means both "vase" and "flowerpot", so when these objects appear in the same game (as happened when I was translating a game from Italian), they need separate translations. In this case I had little choice but to ask the game-maker to change the name of one of the objects so that two separate strings were generated in the .trs file.