English to English translations

Discussions about the original English text
Liallan
Posts: 1221
Joined: 26 May 2014, 07:01

Re: English to English translations

Post by Liallan »

ollyfish2002 wrote:just a small question :
How can we recognise button from log text ?

Buttons - that's hard telling. :lol:

I run a finished game or watch a game in progress. Since I play turn-based, I get stuff in bits and pieces, so watching a live game is a nice overview and gives me a feel for how that game is set up and helps me recognize stuff when I see it. Watching a play-back a turn at a time is a slower way to take your time and really look at things. Doing it all at once gives a good feel for consistency as well, to find all similar strings at once. This is actually what I have found to work best.

Also notice that often instructional things (in what I think he is calling the action bar) sometimes come in pairs, like one that says "Player must select a die," which tells everyone else what is going on, and another saying "You must select a die," which is the instruction to you. (I try to find both so they are consistent.)
Liallan
Posts: 1221
Joined: 26 May 2014, 07:01

Re: English to English translations

Post by Liallan »

Een wrote: I would propose as a basic guidelines set:
- no punctuation for buttons and action bar messages
- always aim to improve consistency, never decrease it (if the developer mostly used ending punctuation in the logs, add missing punctuation in the logs; if not, don't)
- never change or add meaning to a string if you are not 100% sure (a mistake here is costly as it can propagate to other languages)
- for games, take the time to play and see strings in context before changing anything that is not just an obvious typo
- for games, when possible, refer to the game rulebook as a guide for style (but be aware that it's probably not perfect either).

Would that work? Other suggestions?
Should I make the warning popup show up at each change of a reference text (versus just for the first change currently)? Or would that be too annoying?
It would be too annoying. :lol: I sort of figure if someone didn't read it the first time, will they ever? I also figure that anyone doing this on a regular basis should already know what that says.

You could add a line about capitalization that's similar to the game log punctuation, i.e. keep it consistent with what the developer did, unless it's an obvious breach of grammatical rules - not sure the best way to say that. The problem here is that sometimes it's a "style" and is OK to not be correct with the rules. Like resources could be capitalized and just not worry that it's not correct in English - it's a game. But if a proper noun were not capitalized, that's just wrong. Plus being consistent. I feel like this should be common sense.

I would put that in the Guidelines specifically for English. (Edit: I mean at the top of the forum where the other is.) That's also a good place for people to ask more questions as they come up, and you can edit as necessary. Unfortunately some people may not see it there. It should be on the translation page.

Oh, you could maybe add that we don't have to take all the him's and "neutral" them. I did send a private message about you changing that, just as information. I hope that's not a problem.
User avatar
ollyfish2002
Posts: 299
Joined: 29 January 2015, 09:32

Re: English to English translations

Post by ollyfish2002 »

For veggie garden, I was first to translate in French.
There was no dot in all English sentences.
Now it is full of dots even before parenthesis, which is non sense.
I am just wondering who puts them : game creator or translators with the rights to change English original sentences.
User avatar
Een
Posts: 3854
Joined: 16 June 2010, 19:52

Re: English to English translations

Post by Een »

Actually, same person as discussed before. We banned him temporarily, but it seems it was not enough for him to learn to be more careful with translations... I had to block him definitively from the translation module. I also reviewed and reverted strings for Veggie Garden when needed.
User avatar
chesslawyer
Posts: 3
Joined: 28 March 2015, 18:07

Re: English to English translations

Post by chesslawyer »

I just read the posts about English to English translations. I confess that I'm probably the culprit in these situations because I made corrections in Stir Fry 18 and Veggie Garden recently. I think I'll relegate myself to submitting suggestions for edits instead of doing the actual editing. I am sorry and didn't realize what a headache I've been to many of you. Please know that I have no malicious (or even greedy) intent. English was not my native language. But since learning and improving my abilities, I want to help when I see problems I can fix. -- chesslawyer
Liallan
Posts: 1221
Joined: 26 May 2014, 07:01

Re: English to English translations

Post by Liallan »

chesslawyer wrote:I just read the posts about English to English translations. I confess that I'm probably the culprit in these situations because I made corrections in Stir Fry 18 and Veggie Garden recently. I think I'll relegate myself to submitting suggestions for edits instead of doing the actual editing. I am sorry and didn't realize what a headache I've been to many of you. Please know that I have no malicious (or even greedy) intent. English was not my native language. But since learning and improving my abilities, I want to help when I see problems I can fix. -- chesslawyer
I'm glad I was right in standing up for not intentionally trying to be malicious. :D

Since I am a native speaker, I'm happy to read any suggestions you might have. If it's a game you already know and I don't, you could explain the context to me. I try to do what I can but it's not like I know every new game that comes on.
User avatar
flokal
Posts: 1
Joined: 17 August 2017, 15:52

Re: English to English translations

Post by flokal »

Hello, I hope, I'm right here. I have looked on the translation site/translation community. and I have seen that there is a mistake in the English original.

At the sentence "This place is not empy" is missng a "t" from the word "empty". (It's the game: "Bublee Pop")
Liallan
Posts: 1221
Joined: 26 May 2014, 07:01

Re: English to English translations

Post by Liallan »

flokal wrote:Hello, I hope, I'm right here. I have looked on the translation site/translation community. and I have seen that there is a mistake in the English original.

At the sentence "This place is not empy" is missng a "t" from the word "empty". (It's the game: "Bublee Pop")
Fixed.
User avatar
dhnyny
Posts: 68
Joined: 06 October 2015, 18:20

Re: English to English translations

Post by dhnyny »

In trying to correct errors in English text, I've hit the following obstacle:
You do not have the appropriate rights to modify the English source text (it must be done very carefully). Please contact an admin at https://boardgamearena.com/support if you want to help improving the English source text.
As instructed, I sent an email requesting "the appropriate rights," but have received no reply.

I would really like to help with this task. I am sure I meet or exceed all the criteria for doing this work.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.
User avatar
Een
Posts: 3854
Joined: 16 June 2010, 19:52

Re: English to English translations

Post by Een »

dhnyny wrote: I would really like to help with this task. I am sure I meet or exceed all the criteria for doing this work.
If you read this thread, yes you do :)
Should be good now. Sorry for the delay, contact address is really overloaded.
Post Reply

Return to “English - en”