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

[Rachael]

Recently we got two issues and a pull request regarding language changes:
https://github.com/ZDoom/gzdoom/issues/2187
https://github.com/ZDoom/gzdoom/issues/2186
https://github.com/ZDoom/gzdoom/pull/2190

The description of these issues is thus:

▌ "%o succumbed to a bishop's dark power."
Should be "a dark bishop's power.", since they are dark bishops in particular. If they weren't dark, they'd be regular bishops.
▌ "%o was scalded by a serpent."
Scalded means "[to] injure with very hot liquid or steam", and "serpent" should be changed to "chaos serpent"
Demon1 uses normal Obituary as HitObituary
I suggest "%o was maimed by a chaos serpent."
▌ "%o was poisoned by a serpent."
"Serpent" should be changed to "chaos serpent", and "poisoned" to "gassed" since the gas ball they shoot does fire damage instead of poison.
Demon2 uses normal Obituary as HitObituary
I suggest "%o was maimed by a chaos serpent.", once again
▌ "%o was incinerated by the death wyvern."
There is more than one death wyvern (as seen in DkotDC), so "the" should be "a".
▌ "%o couldn't absorb Menelkir's mana."
This is phrased weirdly and can give people the wrong idea when fighting him. I suggest changing it to "%o couldn't escape Menelkir's magic."

These have bothered me for years but since we've got #2186 I might as well post about them.

I hesitate to label this as "bug" the same way as that issue though, since they're not quite the same glaring inconsistencies for a game with much fewer eyes on it than Doom.

▌ %o was slashed by an imp.

There is no reasonable way that the movement depicted in TROOE-G - to say nothing of the sound effect when the attack lands - can be considered "slashing". Was this originally left over from copypasting the Heretic sabreclaw?

▌ %o was smitten by a cacodemon.

I think the intention here had been to refer to smiting by lightning, but I've pretty much never seen the word "smitten" outside of the sense of "she's so smitten with this boy band she's got posters all over her room", etc..
Describe the solution you'd like

Perhaps "scratched" and "zapped" respectively?
Describe alternatives you've considered

"Ionized" could be fun for the caco too.

Since changes are sourced from the Google Docs and this thread, I thought it would be a better idea to bring the discussion over here where more eyes will see the issue.

[Professor Hastig]

For historical context: viewtopic.php?t=6285

It was an interesting read how the community reached a consensus about these texts, and now, after 18 years, a single person (well, two...) comes along demanding changes?
I made a PR for the missing hit obituaries of the serpents, that's a clear omission from back then.

[Rachael]

I am not in favour of the changes either, I think the way things are add character to the texts and I do not wish for them to be changed. I opened this discussion because they might have points I haven't considered yet and I would like them to bring it where there are more eyes on the issue - a lot of things can be better over time with careful thought and debate.

[Graf Zahl]

One word: no.
I see no reason to change what was agreed upon back then.

[Rachael]

I would tend to agree, to be honest.

[Tapwave]

One word: no.
I see no reason to change what was agreed upon back then.

To be fair that seemed to have been agreed upon by a small body of people who specialize in programming and not linguistics, which is why you have this thread. To debate those issues, since those don't touch code anyway. There's no harm in improving what already exists, especially since some of those fixes are perfectly legitimate.

Looking at them through the lens of a language educator, thus with a focus on legibility, consistency and comprehensibility,

▌ "%o succumbed to a bishop's dark power."
Should be "a dark bishop's power.", since they are dark bishops in particular. If they weren't dark, they'd be regular bishops.

This one does not need to be fixed. I believe in it as more of a stylistic choice, and "dark bishop's power" makes the end drier than it needs to be.

▌ "%o was scalded by a serpent."
Scalded means "[to] injure with very hot liquid or steam", and "serpent" should be changed to "chaos serpent"

Correct assumption. However, again, I believe this is a stylistic choice, and this is to avoid being really generic and saying "burned" or "scorched" all the time. Varying the vocabulary gives more personality to the games.
However, adding "Chaos" to serpent is valid and I vouch for it, since they're very much not just snakes.

Demon1 uses normal Obituary as HitObituary
I suggest "%o was maimed by a chaos serpent."

The lack of a melee obituary for the Chaos Serpent sounds like an oversight, considering it has a melee attack. This should be added, thus. The suggestion works fine.

▌ "%o was poisoned by a serpent."
"Serpent" should be changed to "chaos serpent", and "poisoned" to "gassed" since the gas ball they shoot does fire damage instead of poison.

Reminded me of Flechettes, I'm not too fond of "gassed", I would have used "blasted" or "cursed" instead. Gas still feels very poison-y.

▌ "%o was incinerated by the death wyvern."
There is more than one death wyvern (as seen in DkotDC), so "the" should be "a".

I don't necessarily agree. The original game saw it as a boss. Doom's obituaries use The for boss monsters. This should remain as is.

▌ "%o couldn't absorb Menelkir's mana."
This is phrased weirdly and can give people the wrong idea when fighting him. I suggest changing it to "%o couldn't escape Menelkir's magic."

Mechanically there is nothing that lets you absorb mana. You fight him in a very plain arena. This is just flavor text in my eyes.

▌ %o was slashed by an imp.

There is no reasonable way that the movement depicted in TROOE-G - to say nothing of the sound effect when the attack lands - can be considered "slashing". Was this originally left over from copypasting the Heretic sabreclaw?

Could use "clawed" or "maimed".

▌ %o was smitten by a cacodemon.
I think the intention here had been to refer to smiting by lightning, but I've pretty much never seen the word "smitten" outside of the sense of "she's so smitten with this boy band she's got posters all over her room", etc..
Perhaps "scratched" and "zapped" respectively?
"Ionized" could be fun for the caco too.

Smitten is appropriate. Just because it's generally used in romantic contexts doesn't remove the biblical energy of the word when it comes to lightning. Besides, it's also about letting people see those words ARE used in other contexts, too.

[Graf Zahl]

I see there's not much disagreement here. Just a few points:

Linguists or not, the text were made up by people who know the game. Back in the day it was also the most prominent community members here that had some weight.

▌ "%o was poisoned by a serpent."
"Serpent" should be changed to "chaos serpent", and "poisoned" to "gassed" since the gas ball they shoot does fire damage instead of poison.

Reminded me of Flechettes, I'm not too fond of "gassed", I would have used "blasted" or "cursed" instead. Gas still feels very poison-y.

That's the entire point here. That monster shoots cloudy green poison projectiles.

▌ "%o couldn't absorb Menelkir's mana."
This is phrased weirdly and can give people the wrong idea when fighting him. I suggest changing it to "%o couldn't escape Menelkir's magic."

Mechanically there is nothing that lets you absorb mana. You fight him in a very plain arena. This is just flavor text in my eyes.

I'll quote Bill from "Kill Bill" here: Because it sounds cool!
It's these weird things that make it fun.

▌ %o was slashed by an imp.

There is no reasonable way that the movement depicted in TROOE-G - to say nothing of the sound effect when the attack lands - can be considered "slashing". Was this originally left over from copypasting the Heretic sabreclaw?

This is actually far older than the Heretic one. In fact it is so old that I refuse to change it on that grounds alone. It's from ZDoom's earliest days.

[Chris]

Linguists or not, the text were made up by people who know the game. Back in the day it was also the most prominent community members here that had some weight.

Couldn't you say the same about other things that have been changed in recent times, such as the translucency for lost souls? IMO, the changes should be made or not based on the merits of the change, not based on whether it was made a long time ago or strictly who made it.

▌ "%o couldn't absorb Menelkir's mana."
This is phrased weirdly and can give people the wrong idea when fighting him. I suggest changing it to "%o couldn't escape Menelkir's magic."

Mechanically there is nothing that lets you absorb mana. You fight him in a very plain arena. This is just flavor text in my eyes.

I think that's part of the point. To say someone "couldn't" do something gives the sense that maybe they could have done it were the situation more favorable, rather than it being impossible to do. By having the text say "couldn't absorb Menelkir's mana" suggests there may be a way to absorb his mana (and may even be the key to beating him, as a mage fight can bring an expectation of needing to puzzle something out over using raw power). So a new player that may be having trouble with the fight seeing that death message may be led to believe there is such a mechanic, and try to look for something to help that isn't there.

▌ %o was slashed by an imp.

There is no reasonable way that the movement depicted in TROOE-G - to say nothing of the sound effect when the attack lands - can be considered "slashing". Was this originally left over from copypasting the Heretic sabreclaw?

Could use "clawed" or "maimed".

It looks and sounds like slashing to me. Or more specifically, sounds like tearing, which is a suitable sound for slashing through clothes or padded armor. The animation has too few frames to say definitively what it's doing, but I always interpreted it as slashing from the side. The only other thing I could see it as is piercing, but that wouldn't really fit the sound. "Clawed" or "maimed" sounds unnecessarily generic.

[Graf Zahl]

I think that's part of the point. To say someone "couldn't" do something gives the sense that maybe they could have done it were the situation more favorable, rather than it being impossible to do. By having the text say "couldn't absorb Menelkir's mana" suggests there may be a way to absorb his mana (and may even be the key to beating him, as a mage fight can bring an expectation of needing to puzzle something out over using raw power). So a new player that may be having trouble with the fight seeing that death message may be led to believe there is such a mechanic, and try to look for something to help that isn't there.

I think we have a problem if we start overthinking humorous quips like this.

[Julian_L]

There is a problem with the macros: they don't work for regional variants. If we use "ao_esp" in the European Spanish column it will work because the language of "ao_esp" is set as "es", and the column for European Spanish is labeled as "es", but if we try to use "ao_esp" in the column for Hispanic America it won't show anything because it's labeled as "esm esn esg…". A solution would be duplicating the column of "ao_esp" and setting the language as "esm", what do you think about that? The macros "ae_esp" and "a_esp" aren't being used at all in the whole file (and will never be used based on the kind of texts in which these macros are being used). The column for European Portuguese has the same problem.

[Graf Zahl]

Oops, bad design. I'll change it so that the language filter no longer gets used, this was not a good idea.
It'll be fixed in the next release then.

[Professor Hastig]

There has been a report about a bad text here:
https://github.com/ZDoom/gzdoom/issues/2224
This is line 1567 in "GZDoom Engine Strings". The error was only in a part of the languages, a few I could correct but the one still requiring a new text are Czech, Russian, Esperanto and Spanish.

[Julian_L]

I don't notice any difference with that option enabled or disabled. What does it do?

[Professor Hastig]

It enables or disables the weapon bobbing animation while firing a weapon. The issue here was that it said 'View bobbing' instead of 'Weapon bobbing' and several languages replicated the mistake in the translation, while others provided a correct translation of what was intended.

[Muleke_Trairao]

Hey there! I'm a professional Brazilian Portuguese translator who joined to review the already translated content.

I want to share my suggestion, and it's not a small one, so I would understand if it's not feasible right now.

Have you considered hosting GZDoom's and Raze's localization projects on a website like Crowdin? Open-source projects can be hosted there for free: https://crowdin.com/page/open-source-pr ... up-request

Crowdin is a translation management and CAT (computer-assisted translation) tool. It's fairly simple to use and contains the most useful resources that translators need to deliver a high-quality result: TMs (translation memories) and glossaries. CAT tools are not machine-translation engines, they are tools that help people translate faster and maintain consistency, and they are just better at organizing everything. They also tag certain language codes in the middle of strings, so people are less prone to screw up since you can just insert them by clicking on them, plus it's faster than copy-pasting. Even the string IDs and context clues can be attached to the relevant strings, so people have all the info they need to localize appropriately. And lots of other neat features. I suggest doing a quick Google search to understand how CAT tools help the localization process considerably, or even watching some YouTube videos.

I have worked on 4 different game localization projects on Crowdin and the experience has been very positive.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the appeal of using online Google Sheets for hosting localization projects, but they are honestly not the best for translating and reviewing text. Here are a few reasons for that:

- It's hard to properly spellcheck;
- You don't know which strings have already been reviewed, anyone can make a change in any language at any time (which is not good for ensuring the best quality);
- It's hard to keep track of all the additions and changes made to the original text and the translated text (you get email notifications on Crowdin);
- You can't create TMs and glossaries, so it's harder to maintain terminological consistency;

Anyway, I hope this at least starts a reflection on the matter.

Thank you!