Supremacy is theoretically capable of supporting hundreds of different languages, and I have recently received a number of questions asking whether the game will be translated into another language in the future, and have even received offers from people offering to translate the game.

It should be noted that the game has NOT been translated yet. The languages that I have either received requests for, or have received messages from forum members offering their help to do translations, include:

Original English Text
Dafedz
Matress_of_evil
Iceman

Czech
Or-Horo

French
Starfleet.command
Zahadoom

German
Joe
Destructor
Aresius
Swizzer
Pali139
Crys
Jangotat
Iver

Greek
Captain_picard

Italian
Dim1985
Veridio

Polish
Zotar

Portuguese
Leandrovillela

Romanian
Montecristo

Russian
Montecristo

Spanish
Wulfbait


The purpose of this thread is for people to register their interest in becoming official translators for the game. I therefore ask all those interested to please post in this thread to register your interest, as well as the language that you will be able to translate the game into.

Anyone that posts in this thread will not be tied into a commitment to actually translate the game, as the fan-based nature of our project, and the fact that we do not actually hold the licence to make Trek games, means we cannot pay people for such commitments. We can however reward those that make a physical contribution to the game by adding your name to the list of game credits.

Due to a small number of issues with the game, it is not currently possible to actually write the translation yet. If you wish to know what these issues are, then I can write you a PM, but that's a little too much info for this thread for the time being. I will however continue to update this thread with any additional, relevant information as it becomes available.

You can also add Greek to the list

Obviously, I also volunteer for the job

Hello, my name is Daniel and I began the French translation and here is an example of my translation on the structures used by all the empires:

Wind Turbines

Eolienne
-------------------------------
This age-old technology is employed here in its simplest function, harnessing the power of the wind for the safe and efficient generation of electricity, although on a small scale.

"Cette ancienne technologie est employée ici dans sa plus simple fonction, exploitant la puissance du vent pour la sécurité et l'efficacité de la production d'électricité, malgré une petite échelle."
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Advanced Turbines

Eolienne Avancée
------------------
These Advanced Turbines are most suited to the wind storms of barren worlds. Utilizing highly sophisticated micro-capacitors, they also deliver far more usable current than would be normally generated by the older turbines.

"Ces Eoliennes Avancées sont les plus adaptées aux tempêtes de vent des mondes stériles. En utilisant des micro-condensateurs fortement sophistiqués, elles distribuent aussi beaucoup de courant utilisable plus qu'il ne serait normalement produit par de plus vieilles éoliennes."
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Charge Collectors

Collecteur de Charge
--------------------
The heavily charged atmospheres of arctic worlds are an abundant source of energy. Charge collectors gather this latent energy, and simultaneously calm violent weather patterns.

"Les atmosphères lourdement chargées des mondes arctiques sont une source abondante d'énergie. Le Collecteur de Charge rassemble cette énergie latente et apaise simultanément des conditions météorologiques violentes."

Thanks guys, that looks great. I guess you could be saying that the Captain Kirk wears girls under garments and I would not know it. Thanks in any event.

Hello everybody.

I am Montecristo and I also would like to contribute to this part of the game.
I would be willing to do the translations for both ROMANIAN and RUSSIAN.

Wow guys, thanks for the great response already!

As I said, it isn't yet possible to actually implement the translations in the game yet as the editor isn't working, so there's no point in translating any part s of the game unless you really want to. I have been looking at the game files to see if there is a manual method of doing it, and I have made some discoveries. This is an example of the entry for the type 1 University from the TextDatabase.xml file from the data folder:


Notice the line that I've highlighted? Supremacy uses "en" to specify that the language is in English; I therefore assume that similar letters, such as "fr" for French, would also be used to specify other languages. So, for example, if the translated version was included, the entry would instead look something like this:



This also points to another file; the Strings folder contains a single file called "en.txt". This file contains all of the text for the menu buttons, as well as the descriptions for the technologies. I therefore assume that if we were to create a translated version of this file, and name it accordingly (Eg. fr.txt for the French version), then the game would know that the new file was the French translation.

HOWEVER, the game does not yet have a method for players to select their language, so this method does not yet work. So don't attempt to do this yet as your efforts may be wasted. But it's at least an idea of what *might* need to be done in future to translate the game.

I'll keep experimenting and let you guys know what I find.

For the French version, the string file & some files text must be registered in UTF-8 because we use letters such as: é, è, ê, ù, ô
I think that at the moment, as there is no button of selection of language, it is to replace the sentences in English by the translations, just to try to see what it does. JUST FOR THE DEMO (I have already made it and it works well)
Why not to ask to Mike to create a button of selection of language during the next update of the demo?

Mike mentioned something about UTF in the past, so I believe he's already considered that.

I meant to mention that I would ask him for a language selection box though. Manually editing the existing English-language game version would work because the game doesn't see anything changing - as far as it cares, the edited text is still in English, so the only way it would work is if the game was released as single-language versions. The game would therefore need to be released as multiple, language-specific versions instead of one version with a language setting, which could potentially cause complications if people end up having different game versions. A single release with multiple language selections could therefore reduce the risk of version-specific bugs too.

Loading up all of the files with these increased amounts of text would inevitably slow down the game though, so i'm hoping Mike decides to further split up the language-specific files. Splitting them up would ensure loading times are kept to a minimum then, as it would only have to load eg. the French files into memory when a player chooses the French version then, instead of having to load up a small number of gigantic files that contain every single translation.

I also wanted to know to translate the texts if it is necessary to take into account the texts of the demo or those of Dafedz's Database?
I noticed some different texts in the demo compared to the texts of Dafedz

Any differences are either unintentional, or are revised versions of texts taken from Dafedz's database; he just hasn't got around to updating the database. If I make any changes, I always try to notify Dafedz about them, but I haven't seen him online in a while so am unsure when the last database update occured. And as the editor is out of action, I can't make any changes either.

Once the game is at a more complete complete stage, differences such as these should be few and far between, as more discussions, playtesting and so on will have happened. As a rule of thumb though, take the game text as being the most up-to-date version, but for obvious reasons do not assume it will be the last revision of that text either.

I have another idea to propose. Rename all XML files. For example for a translation into French of the XML file TextDatabase the line:
<LocalizedEntry Language="en"> become directly <LocalizedEntry Language="fr">
and rename TextDatabase for example in TextDatabase_fr
with the same thing for all the other translators. ( TextDatabase_it, (Italian) TextDatabase_sp (spanish), TextDatabase_de (german) ... etc)

I've already tested doing that. As the game has no way for players to manually select a language, the game won't recognise the new files though.

...But there's no harm in having translated files ready for if/when Mike does include the option. So if any of you translators want to have a try, here's what you need to do:

Open the file called TechDatabase.xml with Notepad. The TechDatabase.xml file is located in your Supremacy/Resources/Data folder. You might want to set Notepad as the default opening program for .xml files if you've never used an .xml file before.

Copy all of the contents of the file. Do this by pressing Ctrl+A to select all, then press Ctrl+C to copy the text.

Close the file.

Load up a new, blank Notepad file.

Paste the copied text into the blank file. Do this by pressing Ctrl+V.

Save the file as TechDatabase.xx.xml (Where xx is the initial letters for the language you are translating to, eg. fr for French, de for German, etc)

Translate any long text entries that you see in your new file, but leave the rest of the file in English for the time being because i don't know how the game will react to translating the programming stuff. Also remember to change the localized language entry from "en" to whatever language initials you need.

So for example, this is the first entry in the TechDatabase.xml file:



So you would need to change the following sections:



So when you are finished, the same entry would look something like this:



Once you've finished (Or want to take a break) remember to save the file!

Send the translated file to me.

I'll start my translation to portuguese (Brazilian Portuguese) at monday, I coudn't check the amount of text to be translated so I can't post here a estimated time to complete the translation. I promisse to post here until 11pm monday the prewied time to complete all the translation.

Thanks
LEandro

Thanks Leandro

Hi!

If you are still looking for a translator from english to german, then I would be pleased to help you!

Cheers

Jo

Welcome to the forums Joe. We would love to have a German translation lined up. It is safer to not post your personal email address in the forums though.

I think it will set the syntax: <LocalizedEntry Language="en"> in the Civilizations.xml and Races.xml files in the Data Folder

Hey!

Thankk you!

One question, when and how do I get stuff to translate?

Cheers

Hi Joe, welcome to the forums!

I just sent you a PM with info about the translations; there are a number of problems that prevent us from translating the game right at this moment. It was a bit too much info to post in this thread, so I hope the PM doesn't frighten you off.

A soon as the issues are sorted though I will personally post instructions in this thread and/or PM them to all of the translators so you know exactly what needs to be done.

!!!

Too much text to translate and too short spare time to do it. I started with the last entries and I'm "climbing" up to the first. But if there is anyone wanting to help the translation into portuguese it'll be great. If anyone want to translate to portuguese please start translating the first entries so we can unite the translated texts later.
Is there any deadline? How long you people preview taking to translate to the other languages?
...
I noticed that there are some blank descritions. What happend to them? Like Bajoram War Cruiser I.

Hi,
I would like to help translating into german.
Because it's a huge bunch of work I thought I could maybe help.
Maybe gimme a notice when to start and how to proceed.

Welcome to the Forums Destructor. Why not send a private message to user Joe, above. You two may be able to do some work sharing deal on the translation to German. Thanks for the offer.

hej there,

the whole translation bunch sound realy cool. I just wanna say that it could be difficult when two or more persons are translating the same language. Because you get different styles so be carefull not to do the same catagory so it should be okay.
for example if both are translating the shipinfo you could maybe see who has done what part.

They haven't been written yet.

When a book company in China tried to be the first to make a pirate copy of the latest Harry Potter book they hit anther issue. To be first to rip off the book they had a number of translators working on different chapters all at the same time. The problem was that one guy would decide to translate some key word, like the name of some magic, in one way and in the next chapter a different translator chose anther option. You would have to check what the other guy is doing.

And then there's the differences between say portuguese and "brasilian", british english and "american", etc.

Hey guys, sorry i've been off the forums for a day or two.

Leandro, there is no deadline for the translations; they will simply be done when they are done. Obviously people would like them done sooner, but that doesn't necessarily mean the translators *can* do it quickly. I know the game has a lot of text to translate, and we're not paying you to do it, so there isn't any rush or pressure on you to actually do the work. It's up to you as to how much time you spend on doing it - and remember, Mike doesn't even know people are translating the game yet, so by putting it off you could end up saving yourself some work if Mike was to create a program that helps you do the translations.

.Iceman is also correct, there *are* a lot of entries that a missing because they either haven't been written yet, or they have been written but haven't been released as part of an update yet. This situation is particularly frustrating for me because I have already done many of these updates; you guys are therefore working on old file versions. But I can't send you my updates either as this will create other updater-related problems. I really need Mike to come abck and work on the editor, but just isn't going to happen for at least a good few weeks, so we're just playing a waiting game.

...

Thank you for your offer, Destructor, we appreciate it. I'll send you the same PM that i've sent to the other guys about the current translation problems. I hope it doesn't scare you off, because they are not insurmountable. We are simply playing a waiting game until Mike returns and he creates a way for people to more easily translate the game. (IE gets the editor working because that includes some of the necessary translation tools already)

As Kenneth said, if you were to work with Joe, you might be able to halve the amount of work you each need to do. But Viceadmiralv is also correct; differences in writing style could be a problem, especially since the rest of us can't actually understand your translations!

When you discuss who does what work, you might want to discuss *how* you think the text should be written; it does NOT have to be a literal translation of the English version, especially if the literal translation doesn't make sense in your language. Just write something that follows the same sort of lines of what we have written, but please remember that we undertook a lot of research and had heavy discussions over EVERY English description, whether it is for a ship, a building, or otherwise. The text should be as canon as possible - we don't want anything "fanboyish" in the text as people do not like this. I would therefore highly recommend you use sources such as Memory Alpha if you do decide to make any text revisions.

...

As for localisations, yes, that can be an issue. The only way that such problems can be avoided is via beta-reading and working closely together. If multiple people are working on a certain language translation, then they will need to work closely together and discuss all of the points that I mentioned above. I'm going to edit the first post now with the names of the translators so it's easier for people to work out who they need to work with.

Well, i think it would be best when one makes for example the ship descriptions, the other maybe the buildings.
It is also necessary that the translated descriptions will be read a second time from the other guy, making maybe some corrections or so.
this will help not having big differents in translation.
I will also try to translate very close to the original, but with caring strong on the meaning of the description.
I am also not very interesten in fan-boy like texts it should give the feeling of beeing realistic.

are there maybe some descriptions oder texts yet in the game that are final?
then we could start translating, because it is the most work to get it in the right words,
typing is not the big deal.
Maybe some people don't have that much sparetime.

Hey guys, since you've all agreed to be translators, i've created a new special rank, Communications Officer, and I have assigned it to you all.

There's aren't any special privileges, and as I don't have ftp access you don't even get a special insignia image, you just get a special rank that sets you apart from the other posters. If you'd rather revert to your post-number-dependant ranks though, just let me know and i'll change you back.

Welcome to the team, fellow officers.

If there are still translators to German needed, I'd be happy to help.
Just tell me whereto and what, and I'll be diggin' the words.