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Extremely long strings

Posted: 27 May 2020, 08:30
by AnnickW
The Dutch translation of Teotihuacan is almost finished, but somehow nobody feels like translating the last few strings. Perhaps that is because they are a bit... long? :lol: For example:
You may select one of the available Pyramid tiles and add it to the Pyramid for each worker you have on the Construction {board8} Action Board. You must add at least one tile.<br><br>- You can place a Pyramid tile on the first (bottom) level, into one of the empty squares, by paying 2 stone. Score 1{token_vp} for each tile added to the first level.<br>-You can place a Pyramid tile on the second level, over the intersection of four tiles of the first level, by paying 2 stone and 1 wood. Score 3{token_vp} for each tile added to the second level.<br>- Same with other levels.<br>-If a tile was placed on the fourth level of the Pyramid, the Pyramid is considered finished. The active player must immediately move the white Calendar disc to the position of the black Calendar disc. This will trigger a final Eclipse, as described in the Eclipse & End of Game section, and end the game.<br><br>You may rotate the tile any way you choose. When placing the tile, check the icons you are covering. For each icon being covered by an icon of the same type on the newly placed Pyramid tile, score 1{token_vp}.<br><br>If you scored 1{token_vp} for an icon that is red {token_temple_red}, green {token_temple_green}, or blue {token_temple_blue} on the newly placed Pyramid tile (the colour of the icon that is being covered does not matter), also advance on the corresponding temple.<br>Then advance your marker one step on the Pyramid track.<br><br>If adding more than one tile to the Pyramid, always fully resolve all effects before adding the next tile, including the scoring of Victory Points, advancement on the Pyramid track, as well as temple advancements, if any.
I think it might be useful to split these kinds of texts into multiple shorter strings. For now I'll just gather up all my courage (and use an external notepad) to finish the translation, but it would be nice to avoid such endless strings for translation in the future.

Re: Extremely long strings

Posted: 27 May 2020, 08:33
by Een
Indeed. You might request the developer to split it through a suggestion on a Teotihuacan table in https://boardgamearena.com/bugs

Re: Extremely long strings

Posted: 27 May 2020, 08:42
by AnnickW
Thanks, I'll do that!

Re: Extremely long strings

Posted: 03 June 2020, 22:10
by Sandoval
AnnickW wrote: 27 May 2020, 08:42 Thanks, I'll do that!
Have you already done so? I can't find a bug report about this and there are still way too many strings that are not just single sentences but incredibly big blocks of text, divided internally by <br> tags. I think that everything that includes markup like this should be broken down into its parts. Right now, it's extremely unwieldy if not difficult to handle translations for this game because of it.

Re: Extremely long strings

Posted: 03 June 2020, 23:52
by fafa-fr
Maybe some of these strings could be split in parts, but maybe not too much: if small parts are translated separately, then the translation could be of worse quality, or even nonsense.

Re: Extremely long strings

Posted: 04 June 2020, 09:33
by Sandoval
fafa-fr wrote: 03 June 2020, 23:52 if small parts are translated separately, then the translation could be of worse quality, or even nonsense.
I don't think so. Not in general, there might be some cases where one would be missing context and make a bad translation, but this would be improved upon and get fixed eventually. Right now, it is quite difficult to notice what actually changed in a commit because of it, for example.

There's also a lot of boilerplate prefix in these strings, for example:
Price: {cocoa}{wood}{gold}<br><br>Use when moving a worker to move a second worker <i>from</i> the same Action Board <i>to</i> the same Action Board
Price: {cocoa}{wood}{gold}<br><br>Score 4{token_vp}
and
Boards: {board0}{board1}<br><br>Advance on each of the three temples (gaining rewards).
Boards: {board0}{board1}<br><br>Advance on the Avenue of the Dead track and gain 1 wood and 2 stone.
Boards: {board0}{board1}<br><br>Advance on the Avenue of the Dead track and gain 2 cocoa and 3 wood.
and so on. It would make it a lot easier to focus on the message to translate if these are split at the <br> level at least.

I understand why the developer did this: He only wanted to have one block of text in his code. It's extremely ugly to handle translations this way, though.

Re: Extremely long strings

Posted: 04 June 2020, 12:22
by AnnickW
Sandoval wrote: 03 June 2020, 22:10
AnnickW wrote: 27 May 2020, 08:42 Thanks, I'll do that!
Have you already done so? I can't find a bug report about this and there are still way too many strings that are not just single sentences but incredibly big blocks of text, divided internally by <br> tags. I think that everything that includes markup like this should be broken down into its parts. Right now, it's extremely unwieldy if not difficult to handle translations for this game because of it.
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=18172