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Localizing Papers, Please

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Re: Localizing Papers, Please

#11

Post by JoshTriplett »

616c wrote: post #8
danso wrote: post #3

In case you don't see the link, Pope created a web interface, hosted on Github Pages, that allows users to easily do the localization, collaborate via Github forks, and import/export their work via CSV: http://paperspleaseloc.github.io/ Pretty brilliant...reading Pope's devlog for the game makes it clear that he's an excellent game developer and designer..but it's unexpected that he'd also know how to whip up a usefu…

It is always interesting to see people use CSV in place of the established file format for translations, POT files. There are logic for certain grammatical elements (IIRC, it has been a while) and other edge cases that are exactly why one avoids homegrown CSV in the first place. Then again, even Papers Please is making common mistakes. I can count on a single finger the number of i18n jobs I have seen. One in many ye…

That was my reaction as well: why not gettext? ngettext and other facilities are wildly useful, and there are a huge number of tools out there designed to make it easy for translators to maintain translations.

Re: Localizing Papers, Please

#12

Post by slazaro »

DrTung wrote: post #9

Very minor complaint but first of January 1984 is always depicted as '1984.01.01' in the game, regardless of I18N selected. While this is good in Germany, it many countries like US you instead prefer something like '1/1/84'.

I think I recall a discussion about this early on, on the thread for the game on TIGSource. I think he asked what would be the best way to write down the date in numerical format without being ambiguous, given that different places swap day and month. I think he ended up using YYYY/MM/DD because when you start with a year, the other two are usually interpreted as month and day. I think he only wanted to use one format, that was way before all of these localization headaches. He probably left it like that after localization because he didn't want to create more problems.

Re: Localizing Papers, Please

#13

Post by daurnimator »

DrTung wrote: post #9

Very minor complaint but first of January 1984 is always depicted as '1984.01.01' in the game, regardless of I18N selected. While this is good in Germany, it many countries like US you instead prefer something like '1/1/84'.

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1179/

Re: Localizing Papers, Please

#15

Post by eropple »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #11
616c wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always interesting to see people use CSV in place of the established file format for translations, POT files. There are logic for certain grammatical elements (IIRC, it has been a while) and other edge cases that are exactly why one avoids homegrown CSV in the first place. Then again, even Papers Please is making common mistakes. I can count on a single finger the number of i18n jobs I have seen. One in many ye…

That was my reaction as well: why not gettext? ngettext and other facilities are wildly useful, and there are a huge number of tools out there designed to make it easy for translators to maintain translations.

gettext is more of a pain than you'd think unless you're in C or a C-with-a-hat-on-it like PHP. As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread I settled on Excel XML files because gettext (which I of course looked at first) wasn't a worthwhile format for either Java or .NET. And given that Papers Please is (I think) written in HaXe, I don't know what the story for gettext support is there.

That's without getting into licensing headaches, which is why the idea of P/Invoking GNU gettext is a straight-up nopenopenope.

Re: Localizing Papers, Please

#16

Post by DrTung »

daurnimator wrote: post #13
DrTung wrote: post #9

Very minor complaint but first of January 1984 is always depicted as '1984.01.01' in the game, regardless of I18N selected. While this is good in Germany, it many countries like US you instead prefer something like '1/1/84'.

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1179/

Being Swedish I totally agree with XKCD since that's how dates are written here since the 70's. But this standard seems to be receding, for example recently the Swedish DMV had to change so that on new driver's licenses the date is written '01.01.1984' instead of previously '1984-01-01' :-( because of EU parliament rules.

Re: Localizing Papers, Please

#17

Post by ufo »

DrTung wrote: post #9

Very minor complaint but first of January 1984 is always depicted as '1984.01.01' in the game, regardless of I18N selected. While this is good in Germany, it many countries like US you instead prefer something like '1/1/84'.

I don't have my copy of the game here to check but I remember there being an option in the game settings that let you choose the preferred date format.

Re: Localizing Papers, Please

#18

Post by ekianjo »

In his second part of his article, he says...

> There’s a system for making people sound generally non-Japanese (using lots of katakana and dropping prepositions), but it’s tiring to read and has an air of childishness, since this is one of the first scripts kids learn to read/write in Japan

This is utterly wrong. Katakana usage in Japanese has nothing childish attached to it. If at all, Hiragana would be the one which is considered the more "childish" way of writing, but there are numerous imported words (and more and more, I'd say) using Katakana even in business context - and certainly taken very seriously.

If you don't know a language, don't make assumptions on it. By the way the french translation of "Your son is dead" as "Votre fils est mort" is very dry and tasteless, the proper way or saying it in french is "votre fils est decede". I hate it when people do a literate translation from English to French, many words are similar but they are not used at all in the same situations.

Re: Localizing Papers, Please

#19

Post by joshschreuder »

balls187 wrote: post #7
danso wrote: post #3

In case you don't see the link, Pope created a web interface, hosted on Github Pages, that allows users to easily do the localization, collaborate via Github forks, and import/export their work via CSV: http://paperspleaseloc.github.io/ Pretty brilliant...reading Pope's devlog for the game makes it clear that he's an excellent game developer and designer..but it's unexpected that he'd also know how to whip up a usefu…

> makes it clear that he's an excellent game developer and designer.. FWIW, playing Papers Please, you can easily come to the same conclusion. The game is a great game.

It's a fascinating and thought-provoking experience, but I'm not sure I'd call it a great game in the traditional sense (not that it aims to be)

Re: Localizing Papers, Please

#20

Post by thaumasiotes »

ekianjo wrote: post #18

In his second part of his article, he says... > There’s a system for making people sound generally non-Japanese (using lots of katakana and dropping prepositions), but it’s tiring to read and has an air of childishness, since this is one of the first scripts kids learn to read/write in Japan This is utterly wrong. Katakana usage in Japanese has nothing childish attached to it. If at all, Hiragana would be the one whi…

To be fair, "your son is dead" is a very tasteless way of saying it in English, too ;)
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