2009-10-31, 12:20 AM
Below is an example of what goes in a po file which we will be using to translate SOM games and tools into any language. This is ready to go for you game exe and som_db.exe. I haven't tried ways of rewriting text in the tools but if/when I figure that out the same sort of files will be used. This is the way professionals (especially Unix ones) localize software. It doesn't get any easier. There are programs you can used for editing these files with a GUI but I find it's just as easy to hand edit them, if not easier.
We need a complete pot (po template) file for som_db.exe. You can then use that to generate your initial translation from the original Japanese to your game (there's no reason to translate a translation, so it's best to go from the original text for the builtin system stuff)
I will do this for my own project if I gotta. But it's up to you guys to help compile the template file. It's something anyone can do. Though I admit the Japanese part might be a little daunting. If no one is comfortable transcribing Japanese maybe you could help by taking screen shots or just leaving the Japanese blank or something.
The msgstr below is for my own project. The comments are for John's original translation. I'm not positive about most of them because I overwrite most of it to make my project more unique. So in the default terminology pot, the comments and msgstr should be the same.
I wish you guys would figure out how to do this amongst yourselves, so I can focus on doing things like writing programs to dump the text out of your game so it can be added to your game specific translation files. I don't want to hear complaining about this. We can discuss terminology as well, but the primary goal in this is to make SOM games available to people around their world in their own language (don't worry, for the most part it will be up to players to do the translation... which will be very easy for them to do -- but I will make an effort to translate many of the best games here into Japanese because I think that is important)
EDITED: If you want to make your own text file you have to be sure your editor will save in UTF-8 mode. Standard Notepad/Wordpad will not, even if you save as Unicode it will convert to UTF-16LE, however in general the text will still be preserved, you just don't want to leave it in a project that way. For our purposes here, these forums are UTF-8, so if you want to add stuff to what I've done below, you can just post your additions, and I'm sure someone would be happy to compile everything at some point. Some one could start by reposting what I've done below with John's translations instead.
# som_db.exe po file.
#
msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Project-Id-Version: 1.6\n"
"Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: \n"
"POT-Creation-Date: 2009-02-25 07:43-0500\n"
"PO-Revision-Date: 2008-11-27 10:37+0100\n"
"Last-Translator: Holy Diver <[email protected]>\n"
"Language-Team: moonlight-en <[email protected]>\n"
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n"
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
"Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=n !=1;\n"
"X-Poedit-Language: English\n"
"X-Poedit-Country: UNITED STATES\n"
"X-Poedit-SourceCharset: utf-8\n"
"X-Poedit-KeywordsList: _e;__;_c;__ngettext:1,2\n"
"X-Poedit-Basepath: .\n"
"X-Poedit-SearchPath-0: .\n"
#JDO: MAIN MENU
msgid "???????"
msgstr "MAIN MENU"
#JDO: USE ITEM?
msgid "??????"
msgstr "TAKE ACTION"
#JDO: CAST SUPPORT MAGIC?
msgid "??????"
msgstr "USE ABILITY"
#JDO: CHANGE EQUIPMENT?
msgid "????"
msgstr "CHANGE EQUIPMENT"
#JDO: ?
msgid "?????????"
msgstr "STATUS DETAILS"
#JDO: STORE ITEMS?
msgid "??????"
msgstr "PUT AWAY ITEMS"
#JDO: SYSTEM?
msgid "????"
msgstr "SYSTEM MENU"
#JDO: Level
msgid "???"
msgstr "Degree"
#JDO: Class?
msgid "???"
msgstr "Status"
#JDO: HP
msgid "??"
msgstr "Lifeforce"
#JDO: MP
msgid "??"
msgstr "Condition"
#JDO: Strength
msgid "??"
msgstr "Battle Power"
#JDO: Magic
msgid "??"
msgstr "Arcane Magic"
#JDO: Gold?
msgid "????"
msgstr "Coin Purse"
#JDO: Experience
msgid "???"
msgstr "Kill Score"
#JDO: Status
msgid "??"
msgstr "Danger"
#JDO: Elapsed Time
msgid "????"
msgstr "Elapsed Time"
We need a complete pot (po template) file for som_db.exe. You can then use that to generate your initial translation from the original Japanese to your game (there's no reason to translate a translation, so it's best to go from the original text for the builtin system stuff)
I will do this for my own project if I gotta. But it's up to you guys to help compile the template file. It's something anyone can do. Though I admit the Japanese part might be a little daunting. If no one is comfortable transcribing Japanese maybe you could help by taking screen shots or just leaving the Japanese blank or something.
The msgstr below is for my own project. The comments are for John's original translation. I'm not positive about most of them because I overwrite most of it to make my project more unique. So in the default terminology pot, the comments and msgstr should be the same.
I wish you guys would figure out how to do this amongst yourselves, so I can focus on doing things like writing programs to dump the text out of your game so it can be added to your game specific translation files. I don't want to hear complaining about this. We can discuss terminology as well, but the primary goal in this is to make SOM games available to people around their world in their own language (don't worry, for the most part it will be up to players to do the translation... which will be very easy for them to do -- but I will make an effort to translate many of the best games here into Japanese because I think that is important)
EDITED: If you want to make your own text file you have to be sure your editor will save in UTF-8 mode. Standard Notepad/Wordpad will not, even if you save as Unicode it will convert to UTF-16LE, however in general the text will still be preserved, you just don't want to leave it in a project that way. For our purposes here, these forums are UTF-8, so if you want to add stuff to what I've done below, you can just post your additions, and I'm sure someone would be happy to compile everything at some point. Some one could start by reposting what I've done below with John's translations instead.
# som_db.exe po file.
#
msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Project-Id-Version: 1.6\n"
"Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: \n"
"POT-Creation-Date: 2009-02-25 07:43-0500\n"
"PO-Revision-Date: 2008-11-27 10:37+0100\n"
"Last-Translator: Holy Diver <[email protected]>\n"
"Language-Team: moonlight-en <[email protected]>\n"
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n"
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
"Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=n !=1;\n"
"X-Poedit-Language: English\n"
"X-Poedit-Country: UNITED STATES\n"
"X-Poedit-SourceCharset: utf-8\n"
"X-Poedit-KeywordsList: _e;__;_c;__ngettext:1,2\n"
"X-Poedit-Basepath: .\n"
"X-Poedit-SearchPath-0: .\n"
#JDO: MAIN MENU
msgid "???????"
msgstr "MAIN MENU"
#JDO: USE ITEM?
msgid "??????"
msgstr "TAKE ACTION"
#JDO: CAST SUPPORT MAGIC?
msgid "??????"
msgstr "USE ABILITY"
#JDO: CHANGE EQUIPMENT?
msgid "????"
msgstr "CHANGE EQUIPMENT"
#JDO: ?
msgid "?????????"
msgstr "STATUS DETAILS"
#JDO: STORE ITEMS?
msgid "??????"
msgstr "PUT AWAY ITEMS"
#JDO: SYSTEM?
msgid "????"
msgstr "SYSTEM MENU"
#JDO: Level
msgid "???"
msgstr "Degree"
#JDO: Class?
msgid "???"
msgstr "Status"
#JDO: HP
msgid "??"
msgstr "Lifeforce"
#JDO: MP
msgid "??"
msgstr "Condition"
#JDO: Strength
msgid "??"
msgstr "Battle Power"
#JDO: Magic
msgid "??"
msgstr "Arcane Magic"
#JDO: Gold?
msgid "????"
msgstr "Coin Purse"
#JDO: Experience
msgid "???"
msgstr "Kill Score"
#JDO: Status
msgid "??"
msgstr "Danger"
#JDO: Elapsed Time
msgid "????"
msgstr "Elapsed Time"