stdh
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Joined: 2013-08-04, 21:05
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Pry about Widelands
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Posted at: 2016-09-28, 21:08
Hello fellow vertalers!
I'm quite new as a translator and recently uploaded some new strings. To discuss these I post this too large heap of text, in English because some stuff is relevant for other languages as well. Here goes:
1. The strangest thing I noticed while playing: the charcoal kiln was translated as "Kolenmijn", the term for the Coal Mine. I checked other languages and found it occurs in some of them as well, probably a faulty automatic translation. We'd better take the old translation for "Charcoal Burner's House" then.
2. For "licensed" I couldn't find a nice translation, so I took "vrijgegeven" which means "released", or part by part "free" "given". Sounds apt to me. ;)
3. a) For the tooltips explaining a building's production, I aimed to start them all on a lower case letter (but it seems I failed with "Niet begonnen met ..." and possibly "Schepen zijn niet bruikbaar op deze kaart!"). This is because the production substrings ("baking bread" etc.) sometimes ended up at the beginning of the phrase and sometimes in the middle, so I kept these lowercase to begin with. Now the only capital in the phrase is that of the ware produced (or not), which looks a bit silly. Maybe those phrases could be made to start with a capital (for languages that use them) in the code? But then, "iron" capitalised in Dutch is "IJzer"...
3. b)In those tooltips, I did away with "the ware ‘%s’" and replaced by just "%s". Grammatically speaking that works in Dutch. (Apropos GunChleoc, when on the bug tracker I spoke of outrageous translations, I meant those tooltips which were half English half Dutch. I understand making fluent sentences with all terms in correct case etc. is a quite complex endeavour.)
4. Some terms in English I consider (somewhat) improper:
* "planting" $something, when the farmer is clearly sowing (eg. "planting wheat", also blackroot).
* "forging a wooden spear", I refused to take that literally, it's "een houten speer produceren" in Dutch :)
* The "shepherd" works in fixed location, contrary to my pastoral image of joining a flock in its travels. Or do I misunderstand this term?
* Some of the uses of "vein" are not entirely correct (granite and coal, at least i suppose so), but a "Water Vein" sounds downright weird. ;) I translated that as "Grondwater". Also ".. can’t find any water in his work area." sounds a bit strange (except if the carrier is indeed hewing water from amid the rocks), maybe we can make that ".. in his well"? Logically, the 'work area' in this case really belongs to the building and not to the worker.
* "Field (harvested)" etc., I suppose that should be "Wheat Field ($status)"? But when is this string used?
5. Some possibly strange words I introduced (or older versions I kept):
* "Blokhuis" for "Blockhouse", as the English term seems to have evolved from Dutch 'blokhus'
* "Houtskoolmeiler" for "Charcoal Kiln". I didn't know that word either, but it seems to be the accurate term for the covered heap of wood.
* "Goudspinnerij" for "Gold Spinning Mill" even if I don't think gold can be spun (rather drawn), but I retained this in keeping with the sometimes mystic Atlantean economy.
* "Oorlogsmanufactuur" for "War Mill", couldn't restrain myself :)
* "Rantsoen" for "Ration" and "Snack" for "Snack", closer to the English and clearer expression of the progression Ration < Snack < Meal.
* "Ontmantelingswerf" for "Dismantle Site", awkward, but couldn't find anything better. According to the glossary, in some translations (including Dutch) "dismantle" was taken to be a verb.
6. And some suggestions, if no-one protests I'd like to implement them:
* "Specie" -> "Mortel", but this may be my Flemish preference
* "Doek" -> "Laken"? 'Doek' sounds very unsophisticated, but 'laken' sounds rather medieval.
* "Harnas" -> "Kuras" (< "Maliënkolder" < "Verguld Harnas")?
* Remove the extra 'e's from "Taveerne" and "Wijngaarde", these sound too old-skool, even for me.
* "Kolenmijn" -> "Steenkoolmijn"
* Translate "$animal Farm" -> $(animal)enstal, so we get a "Paardenstal", "Schapenstal", but maybe keep the "Varkensfokkerij" (because that one's less about keeping animals than butchering them) and the "Spinnenboerderij"?
* "smederij" -> "smidse"
7. I would prefer better terms, but can't think of any, for:
* "Boomstam", I'm just jealous of the concise English "Log".
* "Hoogoven" (for "Smelting Works"), because I'm not sure if this really qualify for this term.
* "Rozenhout". I don't understand where this word comes from, and I don't associate it with some sturdy type of processed wood. But I do understand that it has a long history in our Dutch translation...
* "Steenhouwershuis" (and also the original English "Stonemason’s House"), because this is not the only house where a steenhouwer lives.
* "Metaalbewerkerij", this sounds a bit awkward and we already have a lot of (somewhat artificial) names ending on "-ij".
The glossary on Transifex I didn't update, but I downloaded it to consult off-line. It can now be filled in almost completely, at least when there is consensus.
Edited: 2016-09-28, 21:43
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GunChleoc
Joined: 2013-10-07, 14:56
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Posted at: 2016-09-29, 08:43
stdh wrote:
Hello fellow vertalers!
I'm quite new as a translator and recently uploaded some new strings. To discuss these I post this too large heap of text, in English because some stuff is relevant for other languages as well. Here goes:
Thanks for updating the translation 
- The strangest thing I noticed while playing: the charcoal kiln was translated as "Kolenmijn", the term for the Coal Mine. I checked other languages and found it occurs in some of them as well, probably a faulty automatic translation. We'd better take the old translation for "Charcoal Burner's House" then.
We don't use automated translations, so it looks like some translators have not done their job properly. Changing the English string won't safeguard us from bad translations. If you still remember, can you send me a private message with the languages affected, so I can have a look?
- For "licensed" I couldn't find a nice translation, so I took "vrijgegeven" which means "released", or part by part "free[ly]" "given". Sounds apt to me.
I have found the following translations on Translatewiki: gelicenseerd, vrijgegeven, de licentie X heeft, licentie X. 3 of those were even in the same project. Seems like the Dutch translation community doesn't agree on a term here. You can also search Microsoft translations - the term appears quite often there with various translations.
- a) For the tooltips explaining a building's production, I aimed to start them all on a lower case letter (but it seems I failed with "Niet begonnen met ..." and possibly "Schepen zijn niet bruikbaar op deze kaart!"). This is because the production substrings ("baking bread" etc.) sometimes ended up at the beginning of the phrase and sometimes in the middle, so I kept these lowercase to begin with. Now the only capital in the phrase is that of the ware produced (or not), which looks a bit silly. Maybe those phrases could be made to start with a capital (for languages that use them) in the code? But then, "iron" capitalised in Dutch is "IJzer"...
You are free to use capital or lowercase, whatever works for your language - can you make the following 3 sentence bits trigger the same word order?
- Did not start %1$s because %2$s
- Completed %1$s because %2$s
- Skipped %1$s because %2$s
If you still need the phrases with upper and lowercase variants, please let me know - I could program something. The code is not trivial though because of accented letters, so this can't happen for Build 19. I am also contemplating to give languages the option of converting ware/worker/building names to lowercase if they are not at the start of the sentence. This will take quite a bit of programming though.
- b)In those tooltips, I did away with "the ware ‘%s’" and replaced by just "%s". Grammatically speaking that works in Dutch. (Apropos GunChleoc, when on the bug tracker I spoke of outrageous translations, I meant those tooltips which were half English half Dutch. I understand making fluent sentences with all terms in correct case etc. is a quite complex endeavour.)
Yes, it is quite complex, because every language is different. It is actually perfect to do away with "the ware" if it works for your language
- Some terms in English I consider (somewhat) improper:
- "planting" $something, when the farmer is clearly sowing (eg. "planting wheat", also blackroot).
- "forging a wooden spear", I refused to take that literally, it's "een houten speer produceren" in Dutch
Whatever works and sounds good in your language! I have "making" for these
- The "shepherd" works in fixed location, contrary to my pastoral image of joining a flock in its travels. Or do I misunderstand this term?
You can translate as "Sheep Farmer" if that sounds better in your language.
- Some of the uses of "vein" are not entirely correct (granite and coal, at least i suppose so), but a "Water Vein" sounds downright weird. I translated that as "Grondwater".
This is where the term comes from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing
Also ".. can’t find any water in his work area." sounds a bit strange (except if the carrier is indeed hewing water from amid the rocks), maybe we can make that ".. in his well"? Logically, the 'work area' in this case really belongs to the building and not to the worker.
Good point, I have opened an issue on Transifex.
- "Field (harvested)" etc., I suppose that should be "Wheat Field ($status)"? But when is this string used?
It's not visible yet. Once we expand the help further, it will appear as a unit in a list. We don't have help for tribe immovables yet.
- Some possibly strange words I introduced (or older versions I kept):
- "Ontmantelingswerf" for "Dismantle Site", awkward, but couldn't find anything better. According to the glossary, in some translations (including Dutch) "dismantle" was taken to be a verb.
I have "at its dismantling". Yes, that sounds good in Gaelic 
- I would prefer better terms, but can't think of any, for:
- "Boomstam", I'm just jealous of the concise English "Log".
German is using "Stamm", would that work for Dutch?
- "Hoogoven" (for "Smelting Works"), because I'm not sure if this really qualify for this term.
German has Hochofen
The glossary on Transifex I didn't update, but I downloaded it to consult off-line. It can now be filled in almost completely, at least when there is consensus.
Until there is, you could add a note to the glossary entries stating what you want to change it to. I'd say give it a week and then go ahead with the really important terms so you will have a consistent translation for Build 19.
Edited: 2016-09-29, 08:58
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stdh
Topic Opener
Joined: 2013-08-04, 21:05
Posts: 41
Pry about Widelands
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Posted at: 2016-10-04, 21:09
(Numbering doesn't survive quoting, so now for something completely different:)
Charcoal Kiln The languages seem to be Galician, Hebrew, Croatian, Japanese, Bokmål, Nynorsk, Occitan, Brazilian Portuguese, Swedish and Ukrainian. Checked with:
for pof in $(ls po/tribes); do
echo "*** ${pof} ***" ;
msggrep -K -E -e "(^Coal Mine)|(Charcoal Kiln)" po/tribes/$pof |sed -nre '/msgstr "(.+)"/ s//\1/ p' ;
done |less
I don't think changing the English name would help. But this list of languages is rather long and it seems strange for this to be a random mistake. For example Galician in build18 had "Casa do queimador de carbón" for "Charcoal Burner's House", different from the Coal Mine's name. So if translators for these languages don't correct it in time, we might want to use the translations from build 18?
"license" I think "licentiëren" is an awful Anglicism with no adequate alternatives, presumably that explains the lack of consensus. I'll stick to "vrijgeven".
Production tooltips I would prefer to start these with a capital as they're (almost) sentences, and I might change the word order for these three templates in order to do so, if the result sounds natural enough. Conversion of ware/worker/building names to lowercase sounds very good, that will make it look a bit less like German. :)
Gender matters - new!: I had a problem with the demonstrative pronoun in "Do you really want to dismantle/destroy this %s?": in Dutch (and other languages) these are inflected for gender. I solved this by using the indefinite article which is gender neutral, resulting in the somewhat awkward "Wil je echt een %s vernietigen?" ("Do you really want to destroy a %s?").
Automatic sentence generation These difficulties make me wonder... Surely some other FOSS project have similar issues, and catering to all languages is hard. Is there some "linguistic engine" we could use for all this, as a library?
Dowsing Hm, to me Widelands' geologists seem too competent to be practicing this. And they don't use a silly twig, but a geologist's hammer - not sure if you can find water with one, but it does look more professional.
Log Alas, "stam" without "boom" does not work in Dutch, it means "tribe"...
Hochofen Maybe I just underestimate our tribes' technical abilities: in the visuals of the Imperial smelting works liquid metal seems to flow in an ingot mould. I'll just keep it as-is.
Glossary I'll do it as you suggest, if I'm quick enough.
O yes, I appear twice in the contributors list, once as Steven De Herdt among the Coders, and once as stdh in Translations,. Could you change them both to "Steven De Herdt (stdh)"?
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GunChleoc
Joined: 2013-10-07, 14:56
Posts: 3324
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Location: RenderedRect
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Posted at: 2016-10-05, 05:58
Charcoal Kiln
I don't think changing the English name would help. But this list of languages is rather long and it seems strange for this to be a random mistake. For example Galician in build18 had "Casa do queimador de carbón" for "Charcoal Burner's House", different from the Coal Mine's name. So if translators for these languages don't correct it in time, we might want to use the translations from build 18?
This is exactly what I did The mistake happened when I restored translations for after the big string change, and some of those teams don't have enough active translators at the moment. Thanks for noticing and tracking them down.
Production tooltips I would prefer to start these with a capital as they're (almost) sentences, and I might change the word order for these three templates in order to do so, if the result sounds natural enough. Conversion of ware/worker/building names to lowercase sounds very good, that will make it look a bit less like German.
I need to fix the bugs in the new font renderer first and complete the switchover, then I can look into it.
Gender matters - new!: I had a problem with the demonstrative pronoun in "Do you really want to dismantle/destroy this %s?": in Dutch (and other languages) these are inflected for gender. I solved this by using the indefinite article which is gender neutral, resulting in the somewhat awkward "Wil je echt een %s vernietigen?" ("Do you really want to destroy [i]a[/i] %s?"). [The more I think about this the more I find grammatical gender to be a thoroughly stupid concept - good for poetry perhaps, not for 'serious' communication.]
[b]Automatic sentence generation[/b] These difficulties make me wonder... Surely some other FOSS project have similar issues, and catering to all languages is hard. Is there some "linguistic engine" we could use for all this, as a library?
Gettext doesn't support gender or case markup. The only projects that I know that support gender are OpenTTD and Wikimedia, and both are custom made.
You could go with: "Do you really want to destroy this building: %s?"
My workaround is: "Will we really destroy this: %s?"
The general solution we have used in such cases here is to translate this separately for each building - we have this for the messages that the military sites send, for example. It makes for a lot of strings to translate though.
In my language the problem is not only case and gender, but that it also depends on which sound the building's name starts with.
Dowsing Hm, to me Widelands' geologists seem too competent to be practicing this. And they don't use a silly twig, but a geologist's hammer - not sure if you can find water with one, but it does look more professional.
I'm fine with it - it's a fantasy game after all. You can of course translate it any way you like if you don't think that it sounds good
O yes, I appear twice in the contributors list, once as Steven De Herdt among the Coders, and once as stdh in Translations,. Could you change them both to "Steven De Herdt (stdh)"?
Done.
Edited: 2016-10-05, 06:02
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fk
Joined: 2013-07-30, 21:58
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Posted at: 2016-10-06, 20:38
"license" I think "licentiëren" is an awful Anglicism with no adequate alternatives, presumably that explains the lack of consensus. I'll stick to "vrijgeven".
"Vrijgeven" means: to remove all restrictions. Than it is unlicensed.
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Venatrix
Joined: 2010-10-05, 19:31
Posts: 449
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Location: Germany
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Posted at: 2016-10-06, 21:50
I would be surprised if that really is an anglicism. In German for example, we too have the word "lizensieren" (from "Lizenz"). It originates in Latin, so the original is far older than the modern English.
Two is the oddest prime.
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GunChleoc
Joined: 2013-10-07, 14:56
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Posted at: 2016-10-07, 09:25
That is technically true, but if it was imported via English, people can still feel it to be an Anglicism, even if it originally came from Latin or Greek.
It also seems that Dutch speakers have an issue with the verbal form and that the noun is fine.
How about translating it as "distributed under the XXX license"?
Edited: 2016-10-07, 09:27
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fk
Joined: 2013-07-30, 21:58
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Posted at: 2016-10-07, 20:40
Officially there is not a dutch word "licenseren" but it is used everywhere:
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=licenseren&ia=web
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stdh
Topic Opener
Joined: 2013-08-04, 21:05
Posts: 41
Pry about Widelands
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Posted at: 2016-10-08, 23:23
Apparently, Dutch is blessed with one of the most impressive historical dictionaries on the planet, the WNT, so we can look it up: http://ivdnt.org/zoekresultaten?q=licentieren (and links therein). So indeed, the word itself is no Anglicism. I'm not sure if I can still defend the thesis that the modern meaning (for software and other electronic stuff; to allow almost nothing except some use, and claiming your privacy and your firstborn for it) it mostly has is an Anglicism. I also searched for both "licentiëren" en "licenseren", they do appear in the official 'Groene Boekje'. And still I don't feel they are proper Dutch words. Am I being too much of a purist? And you're right GunChleoc, it's just about the verb, I have a lot less trouble accepting 'licentie' for 'license'.
Venatrix: I also thought of the German 'lizensieren', could it be that that sounds more or less natural in your mother tongue? My German is not very good though...
Of course, worse than improper language is confusion. I didn't really associate 'vrijgeven' with the public domain or something, but if you do fk, we should change it. We could use some translation of 'publish' or 'distribute', something like 'Uitgegeven onder de GPL'. French just does away with the verb: 'Sous licence GPL'.
Also, can anyone think of a better term for 'inbox' and 'multiplayer'? I just left the English words as they were in the existing translation.
And otherwise, all nederlandstaligen happy about my work? If there's anything anyone likes to change, now is the time!
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GunChleoc
Joined: 2013-10-07, 14:56
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Posted at: 2016-10-09, 00:16
"Uitgegeven onder de GPL" or just "Onder de GPL" sounds OK to this non-Dutch speaker. In Gaelic, we just say "under", or "fo bhuaidh".
Inbox - how do you call the trays where you collect incoming letters as an office? You could also have a look ad the translation in Thunderbird - if there is already an established term, consistency is important to the user.
Multiplayer - I checked the translations for Battle for Wesnoth and 0 A.D., they both left it in English.
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