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

[Graf Zahl]

That site won't work due to its rigid limits, we are way beyond the 60000 words they allow for the free tier.
Another problem is that a significant chunk of our texts is not under a free license so it may not even be possible if there was no such word limit.

[Gez]

The use of drone for remotely-controlled aircraft is kind of new in general parlance. These things weren't around so much in the 1990s, and the meaning of drone as in a hive was much more readily apparent. See meaning #3 here. Drudge or thrall would be closer equivalent.

[Professor Hastig]

I think the best reference is Star Trek's Borg here. They were called 'drones' as well and perfectly match what Strife uses the word for. And coincidentally, all languages I know just did the same.

It might also be helpful to add a quote if you reply to a two pages old post. You had me confused for a moment.

[MilesRun]

Professor Hastig wrote:
> I think the best reference is Star Trek's Borg here. They were called
> 'drones' as well and perfectly match what Strife uses the word for. And
> coincidentally, all languages I know just did the same.
>
> It might also be helpful to add a quote if you reply to a two pages old
> post. You had me confused for a moment.
I agree that the Borg from Star Trek are a good example of Stryfe's drones. They are both very smart and connected, and both work together to achieve a common goal.

[Muleke_Trairao]

That site won't work due to its rigid limits, we are way beyond the 60000 words they allow for the free tier.
Another problem is that a significant chunk of our texts is not under a free license so it may not even be possible if there was no such word limit.

Oh, I was actually not aware of that. It's understandable then.

[Graf Zahl]

I've tried a few other offerings but there doesn't seem to be any good one that both works online and is free. Which is really a pity, this would have been useful had it worked.
I'd be all for it if it helped completing the localizations and made reviewing easier.

[Professor Hastig]

I got a question about obituaries in Italian.

When giving the recent, still open one to deepl I passed this to see what it does with female names:

%o was maimed by a Serpent.
Roberto was maimed by a Serpent.
Roberta was maimed by a Serpent.

What I got back was:

%o è stato mutilato da un serpente.
Roberto è stato mutilato da un serpente.
Roberta è stata mutilata da un serpente.

As you can see, the feminine form is different. So I looked up the macros and found none. After that I checked all the other obituaries, and they all contain the 'è stato...' form without any gender variation.
So what's to be expected here? AFAIK all the existing Italian text is Human translated, so is this something that can be ignored or should be fixed?

[Negostrike]

I got a question about obituaries in Italian.

When giving the recent, still open one to deepl I passed this to see what it does with female names:

%o was maimed by a Serpent.
Roberto was maimed by a Serpent.
Roberta was maimed by a Serpent.

What I got back was:

%o è stato mutilato da un serpente.
Roberto è stato mutilato da un serpente.
Roberta è stata mutilata da un serpente.

As you can see, the feminine form is different. So I looked up the macros and found none. After that I checked all the other obituaries, and they all contain the 'è stato...' form without any gender variation.
So what's to be expected here? AFAIK all the existing Italian text is Human translated, so is this something that can be ignored or should be fixed?

Use one of the macros for Spanish or Portuguese that works the same way, such as @[ao_ptb] in place of "o" or "a".
Like this:
"è stat@[ao_ptb] mutilato da un serpente."

[Professor Hastig]

I know that. It's also easy to add a new macro. What I'd like to know first is what a native Italian speaker has to say before such changes are made. Not that I make the change and afterward someone says 'Nah, that wasn't really necessary!'

[Negostrike]

I'm not a native Italian speaker but as a native Romance language speaker I'm pretty sure the macro should be used in such cases

[Graf Zahl]

Good catch! Unfortunately I cannot give a definitive answer either, I'm not really familiar with Italian grammar.

[Professor Hastig]

What about these:

Spawn co-op only things in multiplayer
Spawn co-op only items in multiplayer
Players pick up their own copy of items in multiplayer
Disable client-side pick ups on dropped items

I think the texts are already bad for English because they are very technical and quite unclear unless you have deep knowledge of the game.
As a result they are virtually untranslatable. Especially the distinction between 'things' and 'items' is too vague unless you really know how things are referred to internally and in some languages they are very hard to distinguish.
At the very least the second one should use 'pickups' or 'pickup items' and I think we need to come up with a proper term for 'things' that can be used in a descriptive context. Here it just refers to the 'THINGS' lump which means absolutely nothing to a normal player.

These are not the only poorly worded menu options and I think a lot more care needs to be taken to describe these options.

[Graf Zahl]

It's not the first time we got these technical texts that are possibly all Greek to many users and may have to be rephrased.
It's something I have on my list once we transition to the reworked menu VkDoom uses. Then a careful review of all texts is needed, best including a third party review from average users.

[Rachael]

Some "technobabble" as it were simply does not translate to English very well at all. Unless you're willing to use up more space than will fit on a single menu line, and then it's too much for the average user anyhow. At some point, I think we just have to accept that some menu options are simply too technical to appear in the menu at all unless it's buried deep within an advanced menu somewhere that's certainly not more prominent than the more important and relevant options.

[Graf Zahl]

TBH, I am not sure that if there is no good way to express a certain function with simple language it makes sense to include such options it in the menu. If that's still deemed necessary they really should be buried in some 'advanced options' area that won't get translations because most of the time those will be incomprehensible. I already see this all the time with commercial software products. Especially Microsoft tends to turn their English technobabble into incomprehensible gibberish for other languages where it quite common that their German UIs for more technical applications (think MSVC) are useless and it is virtually necesasary to use the English UI to understand what's going on.