Translation context needed with examples

[fruktansvärt]

I've sometimes felt that each game and language page should have an introductory space where translators could leave comments and suggestions. This should work like the text frames for each string, with a history and everything, but always pinned at at the top of the page.

It could help with consistency. I've seen cases where terms have been translated four different ways, by different translators (who obviously didn't check previous strings with the term).

[Nessi]

The problem is that there are translators who really make an effort and those who do it just to get the reward points.
For the second group, any solution doesn't matter, because they don't care about communication, quality or inconsistency

I understand your concern, I often face the same problem myself. But I also understand Een that the technical effort exceeds the benefit here.
In general, you should only translate games that you know or have at least read the manual. I fully agree with cigma: when translating, I always have the current game open (I usually use a second account for a training game without scoring) and the rules.
And if you notice later that something is wrong, you can always change it.

[ufm]

Studying replays also helps.

[KongKing123]

So maybe the best would be to update our recommendation to:

Our recommendation is to leave such context-dependent strings untranslated. Then while using the website they'll be easy to spot in context since they are left in English, and at that moment you can look them up to translate them appropriately.

For the FAQ, you mean? Looks good to me.

This will never happen. Someone will waltz in and translate that string, regardless of whether that person has any knowledge about the context or even the game.

There is already a way to communicate by leaving a comment about your translation to explain your translation choices when it's not completely obvious. It is very close to a translation wall (focused on action rather than just discussion).

The forums by language have the advantage to allow for interested translators to subscribe / unsubscribe from forum notifications.

The problem is that you often don't want to perform an action to be able to comment. However, I do understand the effort to change to a comment-style system (with notifications) would require considerable development and is not guaranteed to improve the situation all that much.

A quick win could be to include the subforum link for that particular language on every translation page header.

Right now the "Context" written under the string is often less than helpful. Is there a way developers could use that to give more information? Or an extra Information field perhaps.

For example, the string "Draw" (context: Stw_animations). Is it a verb (Draw a card) or a noun (It's a draw)? These have very different translations. An information field would help with these short ambiguous strings.

Exactly: the developer should be able to add a short global comment, similar to the translators. It could be part of the framework (perhaps strings could be "marked" with a [TRANS] comment or something) or just a developer option within the translation system itself.

This is the only real solution to this problem.

I've sometimes felt that each game and language page should have an introductory space where translators could leave comments and suggestions. This should work like the text frames for each string, with a history and everything, but always pinned at at the top of the page.

It could help with consistency. I've seen cases where terms have been translated four different ways, by different translators (who obviously didn't check previous strings with the term).

As mentioned earlier, this will also not help. I've even seen the same translator translate two strings with extremely similar wording in completely different ways in quick succession.

Many people just don't bother.

[KongKing123]

This practise of using "Context" is already quite helpful within the current system. Kudos to this developer.

https://boardgamearena.com/translation?module_id=1656&source_locale=en_US&dest_locale=en_US&findtype=all

Caper Europe translation context.PNG (26.19 KiB) Viewed 1049 times

[cigma]

This practise of using "Context" is already quite helpful within the current system. Kudos to this developer.

I fully agree! This is how the "Context"-option in the translation system should be used, but I never saw anything as specified as this before!

[SwHawk]

The things is, and I'm talking from a developer's point of view on this, translations aren't that easy when we're developing a game. We have to take care of a lot of intricacies due to the way it's handled. I'm not blaming BGA here, just stating a fact, they've chosen the software they've chosen, and it imposes some rules about how translation is done. And at least some developpers haven't dealt with internationalization/translation before coming to BGA.

For some of us developers, English is neither our native language, nor a language we speak fluently. So developing the game feels like we're already doing some of the job a translator will be doing afterwards...

And then coming back to the translation HQ to change the context of 50 to sometimes around 500 strings, or perhaps even more, you can understand that this is daunting even for some experienced developer. I'm not saying we (as developers) shouldn't do it. It's great that some go to such lengths to help translators! I'm just saying that sometimes it feels like translating the game a second time. And given that the first time around wasn't necessarily easy, some of us leave the things as it is.

Again, I'm not trying to put the blame on anyone, just explaining some of the reasons some devs aren't inclined to input context in the translation system...

EDIT: Although to help improve things, my humble opinion is that a translator should be working with a dev from the get go, so that the tak may be split among the two... I'm not entirely sure how this can actually be done because we don't really have the tools as developers to extract the strings that are going to be translated beforehand, other than actually copy/pasting the strings. A translator having a developing background would be great, but this feels like looking for the rare bird...

[cigma]

SwHawk, thanks you for the insight you give us! I am sure you developers all do hard work, especially if english is not your language.

I don't know how the interface of translation headquarter looks like [EDIT: for you]. But I could imagine some kind of radio button in order to choose the context (from maybe game status, action, material, game log, statistic,...). If it retains its value for multiple entries until you actively change it, maybe that wouldn't be so much trouble?

[SwHawk]

Hey, I've been fiddling a bit with a game I'm currently developing. Here are some of the contexts that can be seen in the translation HQ (as the game is currently in alpha, I'm the only one who has access to it right now) :



Do you find these contexts useful ? Do you think that anything could be improved, and so how ?

To add informations regarding context, those are actually the file names that the strings are taken from... So it involves some know-how to actually regroup the translatable strings into files that are named accordingly, and have them at disposal in the game code.

[KongKing123]

Do you find these contexts useful ? Do you think that anything could be improved, and so how ?

Thanks, that looks helpful. The (I assume) standard contexts of "Option", "Game state" and "Statistic" are also a must.

The most common problems I encounter with context are being unable to distinguish between word classes (e.g. "Discard" could be the discard pile, but also the command to discard a card) and homographs (e.g. "Order" could be an arrangement, a group, a purchase order, ...). The second is more difficult to solve through this mechanism, but can in some cases be inferred from the manual or the theme of the game.