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Localizing Papers, Please

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Re: Localizing Papers, Please

#41

Post by reconbot »

herbertjacu wrote: post #34
brianmcconnell wrote: post #4

Localization professional and developer here. I'd recommend taking a look at Transifex. This is a well thought out tool for managing localization projects and assets (prompt catalogs, resx files, etc), and for managing the translation process (it supports machine, crowd and professional translation, so you can optimize for cost and quality). They also just released a really neat Javascript tool which makes translatin…

"My $0.02" Why do people feel the need to write this after their posts? Were you afraid it would not be clear that it was an opinion? What purpose does it serve? Why did you go to such length to write it as "My $0.02" rather than "My two cents", or just "My 2c"? It seems to be some kind of "thing" that people do here. Is it an in-joke?

It's a way of being humble. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_two_cents

  the user of the phrase hopes to lessen the impact of a
  possibly contentious statement, showing politeness and
  humility.

Re: Localizing Papers, Please

#43

Post by tripzilch »

ekianjo wrote: post #39
antimagic wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, you're still wrong - it's the correct translation - the tone is every bit as detached in both the English and French versions - a softer version of "Your son is dead" is indeed "Your son is deceased", or even gentler "your son has passed away". The tone of "Your son is dead" in English is every bit as cold and impersonal as "Votre fils est mort" in French... (speaking as a native English speaker, that has lived…

You didn't answer my point about the certificate part. Please explain why the words are different in French and in English then.

"(is) dead" and "death" are different words in English, which both can be literally translated with "mort" in French.

that's different words in English.

similarly there's other languages that would translate the English words "(of) death" and "death (of)" to different words (because of case).

and you don't say "Certificate of the Dead", which is yet another phrase with a different meaning and nearly the same words.

it's just different!

Re: Localizing Papers, Please

#44

Post by antimagic »

ekianjo wrote: post #39
antimagic wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, you're still wrong - it's the correct translation - the tone is every bit as detached in both the English and French versions - a softer version of "Your son is dead" is indeed "Your son is deceased", or even gentler "your son has passed away". The tone of "Your son is dead" in English is every bit as cold and impersonal as "Votre fils est mort" in French... (speaking as a native English speaker, that has lived…

You didn't answer my point about the certificate part. Please explain why the words are different in French and in English then.

Uh, because sometimes direct translation isn't appropriate? That was your own point, was it not? It's just that the case you picked happened to be one where the direct translation was in fact the correct translation...

Re: Localizing Papers, Please

#45

Post by ekianjo »

antimagic wrote: post #44
ekianjo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't answer my point about the certificate part. Please explain why the words are different in French and in English then.

Uh, because sometimes direct translation isn't appropriate? That was your own point, was it not? It's just that the case you picked happened to be one where the direct translation was in fact the correct translation...

Yeah, and that's the point I am still making about the original example. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

Re: Localizing Papers, Please

#46

Post by ekianjo »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #40
icelancer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Yes, this is why most people generally hate doing translations in general - people like you who nitpick.

> Yes, this is why most people generally hate doing translations in general - people like you who nitpick. I don't know a bit of French, or Japanese. But I do know that there are a awful lot of English translations, done by well-meaning people, which vary from mediocre to Godawful. Almost every anime subtitling job I've ever seen is at the very least somewhat stilted and awkward to my ear. (Though they're still bette…

> And a lot of it comes down to native English speakers who fear losing the intended nuances of the original and so do a rigidly literal translation, because they think that's the "most accurate."

Agree with you.

One of the key issues is that, to be a good translator you need to have a good command of BOTH languages. I can tell you I see piss poor French translations (from English or other languages) every day as well, and it's not nitpicking, it's just people doing an awful job at what they are being paid for. Most people who do translations are barely even literate in their own language in the first place (you can see that in their obvious lack of vocabulary).

On the other hand, I'd say the best translations I have seen go way beyond the original work, making the translated work even better, more rich, more nuanced than what it was before. It's not just "translation", it's rather close to versioning.

Re: Localizing Papers, Please

#47

Post by antimagic »

ekianjo wrote: post #45
antimagic wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, because sometimes direct translation isn't appropriate? That was your own point, was it not? It's just that the case you picked happened to be one where the direct translation was in fact the correct translation...

Yeah, and that's the point I am still making about the original example. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

Well, we could just agree that you're wrong ;)

Re: Localizing Papers, Please

#49

Post by transpy »

a3_nm wrote: post #29
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…

I find it a bit unfair to request free help from users to localize the game, given that the game is proprietary...

I'm inclined to think the same, but you wouldn't discard fan translations either... If users show interest and enthusiasm for localizing the game, the best thing would be to find a way to integrate that effort into the process. Maybe you could earn some in-game coins or something?

Re: Localizing Papers, Please

#50

Post by a3_nm »

transpy wrote: post #49
a3_nm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it a bit unfair to request free help from users to localize the game, given that the game is proprietary...

I'm inclined to think the same, but you wouldn't discard fan translations either... If users show interest and enthusiasm for localizing the game, the best thing would be to find a way to integrate that effort into the process. Maybe you could earn some in-game coins or something?

I don't find it much fairer to retribute users that work for you using a currency that only makes sense in the universe that you designed and own.

Ideally, users should be cautious in choosing the projects to which their dedicate their interest and enthusiasm (choose those which belong to the community)... Under the assumption that the game cannot be made open source (or that it is impractical to give a share of the game's profit to the contributing users), I imagine that a good solution would be to republish all translations separately under an open license (in case they can be reused, very theoretically, for something else... maybe as an aligned corpus to train a machine translation system), and make sure that the users who contributed are prominently credited.

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