Board Game Arena

We are happy to announce the availability of Board Game Arena collaborative translation system !

... what is this ?!?

As you know, this game platform is 100% internationalized: you can play a game with foreign people even if you don't have a language in common, and all game elements (ex: texts on cards) are translated in your language.

Until now, Board Game Arena proposes to play in English and French. It's a shame, because more languages means more players, more opponents, and more fun ! Of course, the BGA team don't speak 10 languages - and to be honest we prefer to focus on programming games

This is the reason we propose you to help us to make Board Game Arena available in others languages from this page.

To start, we propose you to help us translating Board Game Arena in German. Auf deutsche bitte !

To thank players for their contribution, we are happy to offer BGA club membership to players that will translate the website (1 month / 100 strings translated).

Please note that obviously the German version of BGA will not be published before a significant number of pages are available in German.

A big "thank you" in advance to all players that will contribute to make this service available to a larger audience !

EDIT: As soon as 80% of the main site will be translated, we will open de.boardgamearena.com.

A big THANK YOU to the first contributors:

• pablo74 (362 strings)
• Lord Nimrod (152 strings)
• juliclo07 (121 strings)
• MrMime (119 strings)
• Fristi (92 strings)
• Talraii (73 strings)
• Nobyeni (8 strings)
• prekmurec (4 strings)

EDIT 15/12: Thank you all ! de.boardgamearena.com will open this week-end !

Great idea to let users participate in such an easy way!
I'll try my best to translate as many pieces as my time allows

Count me in for a translation into Spanish. I'm sure there are lots users who are eager to play in this language

Gallardus wrote:Count me in for a translation into Spanish. I'm sure there are lots users who are eager to play in this language

Yes, a foreign language may be a handicap for a lot of users... I'll help translating BGA into Spanish too

Great idea, and looks like good implementation too. Although the translation page currently includes no way to improve on existing interface languages. There are a number of improvements that could be made in the English text strings. For example, in Dominion when a Thief is played:

Original: ${player_name2} steals a ${card_type_name} to ${player_name}
Improved: ${player_name2} steals a ${card_type_name} from ${player_name}

There are also a number of instances where the word "buy" is used where technically "gain" is the correct term (and the Dominion rules clearly differentiate the two). I've also encountered occasional awkwardly-worded bits of text in other games. It would be great if the translation page allowed suggestions from English to English so they would be easier to identify.

Hi all,

Thank you very much for your comments and your contributions. I have 2 good news for you:

• The German translation is a test run for the translation system. If the test is successful, and maybe after some minor optimization, the translation system will be extended to a dozen of languages. According to audience statistics I'm pretty sure that Spanish will be the next language to be available !
• The translation system has an "English => English" mode, which allows you to fix English mistakes directly. It is not active right now, but will be after the test run.

Cheers,

As soon as 80% of the main site will be translated, we will open de.boardgamearena.com.

A big THANK YOU to the first contributors:

• pablo74 (362 strings)
• Lord Nimrod (152 strings)
• juliclo07 (121 strings)
• MrMime (119 strings)
• Fristi (92 strings)
• Talraii (73 strings)
• Nobyeni (8 strings)
• prekmurec (4 strings)

Couple of questions:

1) There are games that have no official translation in certain languages (for example, Race for the Galaxy in Spanish). This may be an issue since there could be conflicting card names in case an official release comes out eventually. Will that mean a temporary translation in BGA that would have to be updated?

2) Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have seen that it is possible to modify the translations that other users have made. Agreeing about the best translation may be a source of conflict if many translators are participating. How are you planning to manage this?

Thanks!

Gallardus

Hello,

1°) Yes, there are games with no official translation. I'm confident that you (ie: the community of players) will find the best manner to translate texts for these games. Just a comment about this: for most "modern" board games, there is not so much "official" text to translate. Game elements tend to be internationalized in order to limit the number of localizations. For most of the games available on BGA, a majority of strings to translate are coming from the software interface (ex: tooltips) and not from the original games. This makes things easier.

2°) Yes, it is possible to correct translations from others. It's a "wiki" approach. We encourage you to use the "comment" and "history" system in order to avoid edition conflicts. If a string is not modified during a 1 month period, it is marked as "validated" and can't be changed afterwards.

Thanks again for your contributions.

hello,

first of all, I would like to thank all people that implemented this fascinating and well performing website!

The collaborative translation is great idea. Here are some of my thoughts after using it for a few hours.

Some guideline should be defined to avoid very heterogenous translations.

one issue for the guideline : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutoiement_et_vouvoiement or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction
I would prefer to use "Du ( tu /toi /te)" instead of "Sie (vous)" in German. It is common to use this informal form in communities.

another issue : some phrases (e.g. end of game) are used in many games. There should be a consistence check or a central place to find a global
agreement for such terms.

Finally, I considered that some translations are done by non-native speakers (using machine translation). I think this a great start, but maybe there
should be a flag, that a native speaker have to check such translations.

Best regards,