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[Dutch] Concerning Current Translation Efforts


Shrooblord
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Hi forum!

 

I've been away from this game and from all efforts surrounding this game for a while now, including the community. I had some personal issues to work out, but I'm back now and would love to get right back into helping translate this lovely game. ^^

 

I see some progress has been made on the Dutch translations – good! I'd like to try and discuss some style considerations with y'all translators:

 

1. Formal Language

Most of the English used in the game is quite informal, natural and almost friend-like. To that extent, I suggest we translate into Dutch to match this style of language.

I know "you" is translated into "U" a lot when translating to Dutch, but "U" is formal and definitely not as friend-like as "jij / je"; I would suggest translating the uses of "you" to "jij / je" rather than "U". Any thoughts?

 

2. Use of Articles

Please review the first post in this topic about the proper translation of the "the" article into Dutch; simply choosing "de" or "het" over the other may cause problems with certain words, and switching around grammar structures to try and avoid articles in the Dutch translation is, while a work-around, not always an available alternative, so we should consider how to handle these.

 

3. Translation of "Towers"

I've had some trouble thinking of accurate translations for the word "tower" in English. You see, what works in English is that you can say "gun tower" and "repair tower" and thus summarise both by saying "tower" as a general denomination. Unfortunately, we do not have this luxury in Dutch.

I've conceded to translating most instances of 'simply' "tower" as "toren", and have seen DeathTech in the translation project use "geschuttoren" for "gun tower", which I rather like. It would be nice to have an effective translation of "tower" that doesn't feel as 'hacky', though, while maintaining the ability of denoting both 'fighting' towers and 'utility' towers – you see, simply translating all instances of "tower" by "geschuttoren" will cause confusion because not all towers ARE fighting towers, but some are utility, like repairing or mining towers. So a more generic translation is required, hence "toren". Thoughts?

 

4. Consistency is Key

I am constantly cross-referencing my own translations I've already made to keep translating certain words the same, when applicable. This is absolutely necessary, because otherwise confusion will arise when conflicting terminology is used. When working together on translations, this means we need to reach a concensus about how to translate certain phrases. So if you disagree with how a certain term is translated, please let's discuss so we can actually effectively change the translation board-wide rather than key-by-key.

 

5. Leenwoorden

Words like "upgrade" and "tooltip", especially technical or 'computery' terms have been integrated into the Dutch language insofar that they might be considered valid 'translations' if left as-is. If not, this can cause some awkward word-shuffling when trying to find a proper Dutch equivalent of these words when not directly available, without choosing a word that 'sort of fits the bill' but is rather lacking in a proper, full and complete translation of the original word and its intended meaning.

"Upgrade" especially suffers from this problem, where "opwaardering" as I've seen DeathTech suggest sounds very nice, but we might get away with leaving it as "upgrade", since everyone will know what we're talking about already.

I'm a little torn about this issue myself, seeing as I do like properly translating as much as I can, but I don't like incorrect language nor improper or incomplete translations, when an English word that's been integrated into the Dutch language also just fits as-is and isn't too distracting. Please discuss.

 

6. Full Verbs

Phrases like "Buy from Merchant" where "buy" is a full verb used as a short-hand for an action the player can perform can be literally translated as "Koop van Handelaar", since "buy" can be seen as both a full verb and a first-person conjugation of the full verb. However, phrases such as these are in practice most commonly translated as "Van Handelaar kopen", i.e. also used as full verbs in Dutch.

This is mostly a stylistic thing I'm used to seeing in Dutch translations, and I suggest we stick to that paradigm simply because it sounds a little less clunky. Besides, that is the proper grammatical way to create shorthand sentences in Dutch, so in my opinion that is simply the better option. 

 

I'll add more points and hope to dicuss with all of you what you think, and make a nicely translated game! :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

On a quick note regarding my translation, I must have done that one the wrong one if I placed "geschuttoren" for "tower" as it is a correct translation for "turret".

 

But yes, I do believe there is some oddness regarding the formality of the language.

In Dutch (Flemish) any sort of instruction information is usually written in Formal.

 

Which puts thing a bit at odds as the game original text seems far less formal.

 

In the terms of articles, it is probably best to review them on a case by case basis.

Preferable it would be best to avoid such issue sentences if one is not very good with them.

 

As stated before the correct translation for "turret" is "geschuttoren" but hopefully I cleared that up already.

Tower itself should just be "toren" with potential attached text, as to specify the tower type.

 

When consistency is involved I agree that the same words within the same context should be translated exactly the same way across the effort. Any deviations from established translations would just create confusion.

 

When it comes to words like upgrade it is interesting to note that when google checked to translate "Upgrade" from English to Dutch it yielded as only result "Upgrade".

Although if you know your dutch, reversing the translation to Dutch -> English. Typing in "Opwaardering" is the only valid translation entered into their system for "Upgrade" as it does allow the translation to find "Upgrade" as a result.

 

Once more proving that google translate does not have all the answers. But yes. In some cases, people familiar with English will have no problem understanding "Upgrade".

Though the reason for translating the project in the first place is to accommodate those who do not speak English. Personally, I find translations need to be understandable by as many people as possible.

 

When it comes to translating the words exactly as they stand or if we should adjust them to Dutch standards, I think the best thing to do is to swap them for.

 

If ever confused please keep in mind the set translation guidelines by the dev team.

Everything should be translated in a way that sounds as natural and free as possible. That said, there are a few things that should be considered:

 

    The meaning of the text needs to stay as close to the original as possible.

    The context of the text needs to be accounted for. Some sentences have different meanings based on context.

    Sometimes, extra context information is given, represented in a gray box.

    %-Variables and $-Variables need to stay in the translation unchanged. We use them whenever some part of the text is unknown during translation and will be filled in by the game, like "10 Ships" will be represented by "%d Ships", as the translator doesn't know how many ships there are.

    Most number-dependent translations will have one singular and one plural translation.

    Whitespaces need to be preserved. The translation needs to have an identical number of newlines, and trailing/leading spaces and newlines also need to exist in the translation.

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On a quick note regarding my translation, I must have done that one the wrong one if I placed "geschuttoren" for "tower" as it is a correct translation for "turret".

(...)

As stated before the correct translation for "turret" is "geschuttoren" but hopefully I cleared that up already.

Tower itself should just be "toren" with potential attached text, as to specify the tower type.

Ah, whoops. My time to make a slip-up. In that post, in every instance you read "tower", please excuse me and read "turret" instead.

The point was to discuss how to translate "turret" appropriately, seeing as you have Salvaging Turrets, Mining Turrets and Healing Turrets, all of which are not weapons like Chaingun Turrets, Laser Turrets and Launcher Turrets are.

So the question was: how do we properly and uniformly translate "turret" so it covers both meanings of "weapon turrets" and "non-weapon-like turrets"? See, in English you can just say "turret" and be done with it, but Dutch does not afford that luxury.

 

In the terms of articles, it is probably best to review them on a case by case basis.

Preferable it would be best to avoid such issue sentences if one is not very good with them.

Yes, but therein lies the problem. If you read my post that concerns this problem more in detail (perhaps that topic and this topic should be merged by a moderator, by the way - not sure), then you'll read that I mention the original translation key is:

of the ${title} ${name}

which means we don't know what ${title} is going to be exactly, which means we can't treat it on a case-by-case basis.

 

However, if we are able to translate "of" into "van" and put the article "de/het" inside the translation of ${title}, then this could work. We need to be sure we can do that though, since I don't know exactly if ${title} is used in a place where inserting an article into its translation will mess some game dialogue up, or not.

 

Once more proving that google translate does not have all the answers. But yes. In some cases, people familiar with English will have no problem understanding "Upgrade".

Though the reason for translating the project in the first place is to accommodate those who do not speak English. Personally, I find translations need to be understandable by as many people as possible.

 

When it comes to translating the words exactly as they stand or if we should adjust them to Dutch standards, I think the best thing to do is to swap them for.

Sound logic! Agreed. I will do my best to translate words we have inherited into Dutch as loanwords by using the appropriate original Dutch word instead.

 

    Whitespaces need to be preserved. The translation needs to have an identical number of newlines, and trailing/leading spaces and newlines also need to exist in the translation.
I want to touch on this part of the guidelines for a moment. Looking through some of the translated keys, I've noticed not everyone has been on-guard as much about this matter as they need to be. For example, trailing Enters or spaces are not always carried over in the translations.

 

My personal method for translating a key is to first click "copy from original", so that all whitespace characters are left as-is, and then formulate a translation by replacing all the text. It's worked well for me to exactly preserve the same whitespaces as in the original translation keys.

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  • 1 month later...

I think we should also take in account the awkwardness of some translations and in this case how intertwined the Dutch and English language have become since the internet.

 

Every single Dutch person will understand what an "upgrade" or "upgrade-systeem" whereas the translation "opwaardering" would be a lot more awkward.

 

Same goes for "toren" and "turret", altough now I think of it maybe "platform" could be a good replacement without changing the context too much but it still sound a bit awkward to my opinion.

 

 

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  • 4 months later...
I think we should also take in account the awkwardness of some translations and in this case how intertwined the Dutch and English language have become since the internet.

 

Every single Dutch person will understand what an "upgrade" or "upgrade-systeem" whereas the translation "opwaardering" would be a lot more awkward.

I guess this is true, but the point of providing translations is to enable people who do not speak English to understand the game. If we're going to be using English words, even if they have become commonplace in many parts of the Netherlands and Belgium (and where-ever you live, you crazy maniac), that means we're not providing a full translated experience.

 

In my opinion, that fails to fulfil the promise that a translation gives to its users by design.

 

Finding a fitting translation that does not feel awkward is, indeed, the whole point of and trick to translating.

 

But enough "ranting"; let's get back into things.

 

=====

 

I like the ideas proposed by Wanderer. The problem, though, is that "turret" is a word that is also used in places where we don't know whether it's a Civilian or Military turret. So in those cases, it wouldn't work correctly.

 

"Platform" is a nice alternative. It does feel a little... off... but better than "toren".

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Maybe for the upgrades, you could just say civiele vuurleiding + 4 or militaire vuurleiding + 4 or so, a bit far stretched, but it would be clear? For the turrets however, and certainly with the coax guns, that wouldnt work. For those, i think the best translations have already been suggested, the platform, geschut and stuff

 

Do the coax guns have the same issue or do they have a different translation?

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