how to make the game-specific terms more coherent (advice to translators and devs)

[David Di Pietro]

Hello devs and translators

It may seem obvious (though apparently it's not the case for everyone) that translators should always check the rules in their language to translate game-specific terms, or worst case if those rules are not available in their langage, check the previous translations so the terms match and are coherent.

Sadly, I've noticed that MANY translators don't do that, which leads to these terms being translated differently according to who is translating it.

Foor example, in "Deliverance", some french translators have translated "blessed" to "béni", and some others have translated it to "bénédiction"
Also some translators have translated "boon" to "don", some others have translated it to "favor", and even worst, some have translated it to "bénédiction"

In the same game, all translators agree to translate "turn" to "tour", but some translators translated "round" to "round" and some others translate "round" to "tour"

And Since most of these translations are already validated, I'm not even allowed to fix them.

That's obliously a problem as it can cause confusion to players playing the game.

Even though the translators should pay attention to that, there is also a really good solution to this problem coming frome the devs, which is already applied to some terms in some games; tags.

for example, there would be a tag ${blessed} and that tag would be used in every string that uses that term, and there would be one string "blessed" which would be translated by one person only, so that every occurance of that word would be translated the same way in all strings.

My suggestion is that the devs should use a lot more of these tags for game-specific terms when writing the strings.

[fruktansvärt]

The problem is that, in some languages, words have different inflections depending on content.

For example, in Gizmos, the dev initially used tags for words such as Pick and Archive, which is not a problem in English as they are the same whether they are noun or verb (in the game). For many languages, this sadly resulted in grammatically incorrect translations.

[fruktansvärt]

And Since most of these translations are already validated, I'm not even allowed to fix them.

When you yourself have enough strings validated, you will be allowed to change any string.

[cigma]

And Since most of these translations are already validated, I'm not even allowed to fix them.

When you yourself have enough strings validated, you will be allowed to change any string.

Or you could ask in the French translation forum https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=411 for help with the corrections needed.

for example, there would be a tag ${blessed} and that tag would be used in every string that uses that term, and there would be one string "blessed" which would be translated by one person only, so that every occurance of that word would be translated the same way in all strings.

The problem is that, in some languages, words have different inflections depending on content.

Exactly what fruktansvärt wrote: This would be a horror to translate into German! We need sentences as a whole to translate them correctly. If you string individual words together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, we neither can adapt the inflections nor the word order as needed for a correct translation.