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

[Graf Zahl]

I just got notified that the Norwegian texts on the "GZDoom and Raze Strings Machine translations" sheet had been reviewed so I moved them to the main document after running everything through Deepl NO->DE for a quick review.

[Professor Hastig]

We just added the reviewed Turkish texts. I think it was a nice check for how well deepl works.
In general, longer texts with full sentences like the intermission screens or Strife's dialogue were translated fine, except for a few weirdly phrased sentences which would have needed a bit rewording to make the intention more clear for the translator to accept them.
Obviously the game specific terminology was rather hit and miss and needed quite a bit of reworking - this is probably the part where a few oversights and misunderstandings might have slipped through.
By far the biggest problem were the obituaries. With Turkish sentence structure and grammar it was very hard to make it create usable constructed sentences and we are not really happy with the result - many of the texts sound rather stilted and poor due to the grammatical limitations we had to work with, but it's the best that could be done here without altering the text construction logic.

In the end it is still amazing how far machine generated translation has come. In many cases it is already better than having a non-professional do the translations, but of course it still needs some careful reviewing. But even so the time savings are huge compared to a completely manual translation.

[Graf Zahl]

I ran some quick tests with Turkish, it still needs some work on the i's. This really ranks among Unicode's biggest fuckups. Have these morons never considered the possibility of fonts where their naive approach simply does not work?

[Graf Zahl]

It's working now. I discovered a few bad texture offsets, though, so it may be a good idea if someone with more time on their hand did a complete check of all fonts.

[Dynamo]

Thanks all for your continued effort in this, and I hope to be able to contribute more in the future, including a full Italian translation for Raze and (hopefully) new languages for GZDoom by other contributors I can get involved.

It does, however, seem that the ZDoom wiki pages on these subjects are outdated. If there's anywhere I can look at a list of recent changes I'd be happy to update those myself, but someone else can also do it if they already know and have an account.

[Graf Zahl]

Out of curiosity, what languages do you think you can get contributors for?

Also, what part of the Wiki? The localization page has only recently been updated, but for obvious reasons it does not have languages that are complete but officially unreleased.

[Dynamo]

what part of the Wiki? The localization page has only recently been updated, but for obvious reasons it does not have languages that are complete but officially unreleased.

https://zdoom.org/wiki/Internationalization was referencing this one, since it was for example not updated with my complete Italian translation for Strife, so I figured it had not been updated at least since then, and on the sheet now I see languages I hadn't seen before, such as Danish and Bulgarian.

Out of curiosity, what languages do you think you can get contributors for?

I am pretty sure I can get people to look through the existing Greek translation since that one is unfinished, and I am also thinking about Albanian, Armenian, Georgian (these two required custom fonts, which I have finished creating recently), Lithuanian and Ukrainian.

One thing I should note is that Strife is the lowest priority, due to the huge amount of text in that game, not easy to just convince someone out of their own volition to contribute text of such an enormous volume.

I also want to finish translating Raze into Italian fully, but that's a separate thing from GZDoom.

Here's the fonts I created for Armenian and Georgian, they are made for Doom obviously but I should be able to adapt them to the other font styles with great ease. I still need to work on their shading a bit:




(No idea why it has a black background on the preview, it has a transparent background...)

I realize that adding new symbols isn't as easy as just modifying the google docs spreadsheet, but hopefully it can be a pull request from my end if everybody is too busy to handle it.

[Graf Zahl]

what part of the Wiki? The localization page has only recently been updated, but for obvious reasons it does not have languages that are complete but officially unreleased.

https://zdoom.org/wiki/Internationalization was referencing this one, since it was for example not updated with my complete Italian translation for Strife, so I figured it had not been updated at least since then, and on the sheet now I see languages I hadn't seen before, such as Danish and Bulgarian.

That page represents the released state, which was from before Italian was completed and Danish, Norwegian and Turkish were added. It will be updated once the next release is out.
Bulgarian and Ukrainian are not complete. People started them but never got that far with them, so that's why they are not listed.

Out of curiosity, what languages do you think you can get contributors for?

I am pretty sure I can get people to look through the existing Greek translation since that one is unfinished, and I am also thinking about Albanian, Armenian, Georgian (these two required custom fonts, which I have finished creating recently), Lithuanian and Ukrainian.
[/quote]

Ok. For Greek, Lithuanian and Ukrainian I have done a full Deepl based translation when I needed to run some tests on Deepl's REST API - that's completely unreviewed but might serve as an aid.

One thing I should note is that Strife is the lowest priority, due to the huge amount of text in that game, not easy to just convince someone out of their own volition to contribute text of such an enormous volume.

True, but I found that Deepl is doing a decent enough job for this kind of text. So for the Eastern European languages that could take care of a lot of the needed work - it is a lot easier to just read over all the texts to see if they are ok than doing actual translations.
It won't help for Armenian and Georgian, though, as Deepl does not support these and Google Translate is not good enough.

Here's the fonts I created for Armenian and Georgian, they are made for Doom obviously but I should be able to adapt them to the other font styles with great ease. I still need to work on their shading a bit:




(No idea why it has a black background on the preview, it has a transparent background...)

For Armenian and Georgian we need variants of the font for all games, of course, but I guess with these scripts we do not need complete work for each one but merely adapt the colors to match the base fonts

I realize that adding new symbols isn't as easy as just modifying the google docs spreadsheet, but hopefully it can be a pull request from my end if everybody is too busy to handle it.

Whatever suits you, as long as we can cover all games with these scripts.

[Dynamo]

For Armenian and Georgian we need variants of the font for all games, of course, but I guess with these scripts we do not need complete work for each one but merely adapt the colors to match the base fonts

This is very much the case, and due to the nature of them, I don't think they need to be remade from scratch for any of the other games, with the possible exception of the 9 height tall red ones, but thankfully, those are the easiest to make too. Will post the rest once I make them Although, I'm wondering, does that also include Hacx, Chex Quest and Harmony? Or are those merely optional?

[Graf Zahl]

I think we can handle them with recolored versions of the Doom font.

[Professor Hastig]

I got a question. If Armenian and Georgian are really being done, what about Raze? The Doom engine fonts mostly follow the standard outlined style, except Raven's and Strife's big fonts, but the Build engine fonts have much more variation in style. I think even for Raven and Strife these Doom-styled fonts won't really do.

[Dynamo]

I got a question. If Armenian and Georgian are really being done, what about Raze? The Doom engine fonts mostly follow the standard outlined style, except Raven's and Strife's big fonts, but the Build engine fonts have much more variation in style. I think even for Raven and Strife these Doom-styled fonts won't really do.

I believe I should be able to make decent versions for Heretic, Hexen and Strife with minimal effort, albeit the small (9 height) version of the font might need to be remade - but those are, if nothing else, the fastest to make by a long shot. For Raze it is indeed a different story, and something to think about later, in case.

[Professor Hastig]

I did a bit reading on Armenian, there may be a few issues as the font is missing all the special punctuation marks.

First the list of all characters in Armenian:

Code: Select all

0x531++
Ա Բ Գ Դ Ե Զ Է Ը Թ Ժ Ի Լ Խ Ծ Կ
Հ Ձ Ղ Ճ Մ Յ Ն Շ Ո Չ Պ Ջ Ռ Ս Վ Տ
Ր Ց Ւ Փ Ք Օ Ֆ

0x559++ ՙ ՚ ՛ ՜ ՝ ՞ ՟ 

U+561++ 
ա բ գ դ ե զ է ը թ ժ ի լ խ ծ կ
հ ձ ղ ճ մ յ ն շ ո չ պ ջ ռ ս վ տ
ր ց ւ փ ք օ ֆ և ֈ ։ ֊ 

For the bitmap fonts it is important to consider that the capital form of և is ԵՎ (i.e. two code points) which needs to be handled.
Properly handling the punctuation marks may be tricky because they are all very small and rather indistinguishable with small fonts.

I'll do a quick check-up on Georgian, too, when I find some time.

[Professor Hastig]

Georgian looks simpler. There seem to be two forms of the letters but texts only appear to use one of them, so the 33 character set should do for all fonts.

[Dynamo]

I did a bit reading on Armenian, there may be a few issues as the font is missing all the special punctuation marks.

First the list of all characters in Armenian:

Code: Select all

0x531++
Ա Բ Գ Դ Ե Զ Է Ը Թ Ժ Ի Լ Խ Ծ Կ
Հ Ձ Ղ Ճ Մ Յ Ն Շ Ո Չ Պ Ջ Ռ Ս Վ Տ
Ր Ց Ւ Փ Ք Օ Ֆ

0x559++ ՙ ՚ ՛ ՜ ՝ ՞ ՟ 

U+561++ 
ա բ գ դ ե զ է ը թ ժ ի լ խ ծ կ
հ ձ ղ ճ մ յ ն շ ո չ պ ջ ռ ս վ տ
ր ց ւ փ ք օ ֆ և ֈ ։ ֊ 

For the bitmap fonts it is important to consider that the capital form of և is ԵՎ (i.e. two code points) which needs to be handled.
Properly handling the punctuation marks may be tricky because they are all very small and rather indistinguishable with small fonts.

I'll do a quick check-up on Georgian, too, when I find some time.

So wait I'm a bit confused, of these, which ones need to be represented on the font still? As for և, I was told this is the Armenian equivalent of &, I didn't think it'd have a capitalized version but I guess push comes to stove it can be made into a unique character by just merging the other two without much hassle.