Translating GZDoom's text content. Read if you want to help

[Rachael]

We could do a crowd-funding campaign but I consider that a more or less last resort. Still though - it's effective and when people in the community pitch in they tend to feel some ownership towards whatever it is they're funding - and even with a hobby project like GZDoom that isn't a bad thing. It allows people to contribute in ways where they lack the skill set to do so.

We'd just have to make sure that it's very clear it's *only* for the translation project and donations won't be used to give the giver higher priority with feature requests, carte blanche to be a dick on the forums, etc.

[Kostov]

Plus, we’ve already found plenty of people that have been willing to do this for free. Doom already has tons of content that has been developed without money as a goal, and I think that level of voluntarism and passion applies here too.

[Graf Zahl]

Plus, we already have most important languages either completely done or close to being finished. This really isn't something I would ask people to invest money in. A translation of the extent we have will cost quite a bit of money. Remember, I have been working on commercial localization projects and the general rule has always been not to overextend due to costs. For example, Dutch may be interesting on paper but the Netherlands are a country where nearly everybody either understands English or German. Thus, it's not the type of language you normally translate to, except for children content or business software that may be used by non-computer users, and much of the same applies to the nordic languages. If someone volunteers, great, but this is not a must-have feature.

[Kinsie]

Also: Is there someone interested in doing a Chinese translation?

I believe PlayerLin is the only forums member from that side of the world? Maybe there are other Chinese Doomers that we don't know about due to the language barrier? I'd sincerely love to know.

[Rachael]

Also: Is there someone interested in doing a Chinese translation?

I believe PlayerLin is the only forums member from that side of the world? Maybe there are other Chinese Doomers that we don't know about due to the language barrier? I'd sincerely love to know.

Isn't Leileilol Chinese, too?

Anyway - from what I understand, this site is filtered in China.

And I only have one thing to say to the Chinese government, for that: (note that I am singling out the government for this, not the citizens)

---

[Kostov]

I believe this means we can legally only get a Taiwanese Mandarin translation—unless we find someone willing who speaks fluent Mandarin outside of China, but I’m not sure whether that would be effective considering the internet block.

Though, I just used a couple of Chinese firewall checkers, and they didn’t say the site’s blocked.

[Captain J]

Huh. I didn't know Leilei was Chinese, tbh! Maybe i haven't interacted with them so often, but i'm so embarrassed right now... Anyway i'm sure lei and other Chinese people around the doom community would make the Chinese Translation come true!

... And huh. If you think the Chinese government is bad, you should try our Government as well. I don't really want to start the political discussion, but we are certainly in distress right now... ANYWAY, if you need more our help with the Korean translation, let me know!

[Gez]

I believe this means we can legally only get a Taiwanese Mandarin translation

We can legally get any sort of translation; Simplified Chinese is not exclusive to mainland China. Chinese emigrants and expatriates can be found in practically every country of the world, and China has opened Confucius Institutes everywhere they could to teach other people Simplified Chinese.

[Nash]

My girlfriend is chinese (native; fluent in mandarin, cantonese and hokkien), maybe I can get her to do it. Only catch is she's a school teacher so she can only do stuff on weekends.

(Her english is better than mine, but I'm going to have to help her because she doesn't play any of these games haha so I will have to explain context to her)

[Rachael]

Though, I just used a couple of Chinese firewall checkers, and they didn’t say the site’s blocked.

I stand corrected then.

However, the image I posted as a message to the Chinese government, on the other hand, still stands. It's really the fact that the Chinese government are such control freaks that really bothers me, and that's why they deserve it.

[PlayerLin]

I'm sure there is some DooMers in Mainland China or other locations which speak Chinese...and some of them may have good English, just not sure where they are or they even have any interests for this hobby project...

If I have time... I can do Taiwanese Mandarin(or Traditional Chinese, also using in Hong Kong and Macau) translations but the problem is...I may don't have enough of spare time to do with my own currently, also my English isn't very fluent so I may have problems with some puns or something like references form other movies, video games or cults.


Maybe I can try to ask some helps(like the members of DOOM Barracks clan, but they're inactive recently, and their website just a backup site and not finished yet), but I can't promised anything...

For Simplified Chinese, for me...I cannot help too much since I'm from Taiwan(know some but not as good as people in/from Mainland China), so that job is not fit to me, maybe Leileilol or someone else could be better choice.

[Graf Zahl]

Since Portuguese and Korean are complete now, I just added both language to the menu.

Regarding the currently used set of texts, it means we have full support of English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Korean.
Well - almost complete. There's one small bit still missing - and that's the Chex Quest 3 localization for Spanish and Russian. While not being a show stopper, it'd be great if those missing 60 lines of text could be added to those languages for the upcoming release which is planned for next weekend.

EDIT: I added the Spanish level and episode names myself, after showing the Google Translate results to a colleague who speaks some Spanish, so I hope they are ok. For me these were the most important things to get filled in. For the rest I don't really feel comfortable about machine translations.

[carlcyber]

For traditional Chinese, I'd like to make some fast contributions since there are existing materials for stories like E1TEXT, C2TEXT, P3TEXT, T4TEXT, which came from a group of Taiwanese players more than a decade ago.

For anyone who is interested in where they are, they're here.

[Graf Zahl]

Yes, it's a good idea to collect such content to save work later, even though it won't be used for now. If you request access to the spreadsheets I'll grant it. Since I cannot read that text it has to be done by someone who can read Chinese.

[Gez]

I'm curious about the few English (or English-looking) words that are found there. Like "Darway". "Phobos" and "Deimos" are also named in English (with Deimos typoed as Diemos). I have no idea why "Mink" appears frequently in the section titles. Then Doom II gets "Doomnobody" which is also weird. The interjection "Oh" appears in the first Plutonia intermission text.