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Translators Guide Portuguese

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ChrisOelmueller edited this page Feb 19, 2013 · 2 revisions

This page aims to provide help to new translators by explaining the internationalization process, its difficulties and issues and offering a common ground for anyone that wishes to work on bringing [Unknown Horizons] (http://www.unknown-horizons) to the language of Camões. Everyone is encouraged to improve this page with new information, corrections and any and all change that could help future translators.

Translations will be mainly worked at [Pootle] (http://pootle.unknown-horizons.org/pootle.fcgi) since any changes in there will update the source files hourly making it easy for new game releases to have updated translations and avoiding the need for manual updates. Pootle is a user-friendly web portal that eases the translation process allowing for online translation, work assignment and statistics, thus resulting in an easier volunteer collaborations and contribution.

You are also encouraged to submit bug reports, suggestions or changes. Either using the Pootle server, the issue tracker for Unknown Horizons or coming to IRC to talk with other developers and translators. You can find all the tools in the Unknown Horizons website or you can use the following links:

Tools

You can use whatever tool you like in order to translate the game. Though Pootle is the preferred way, if you tools works for you then you can use it. But please keep in mind that Pootle offers an automatic hourly sync with the source so that any translated strings are committed to the Git repository's master branch without the need for any of us to interveen. If you use an offline tool you'll need to merge your changes to any other change that has been made in Pootle and then you need to submit a patch against the master branch.

If you're looking for an offline translation tool, there are several good tools out there but two that are widely used and freely available are:

GNU Linux users should first check their package manager since these two tools are most likely to be available using your distro repositories. The above software is also available for MS Windows and OS X.

Using Pootle

As said previously, we mainly work with Pootle that updates hourly our development git repository. Working with Pootle is very easy but please be nice to people and leave comments on your changes and follow the main guidelines. Since the changes are automatic, translations can easily make their way to a release without being properly tested.

When you register at Pootle you'll be automatically registered at the translators mailing list. You can use this list to get in touch with other translators, ask questions or just introduce yourself.

Translation/Internationalization

Translating isn't only about free translations of strings, many times it will be required a bit more. Many issues have came along since the project started, and will pop for other people in the future. This section aims to provide some guidelines for translators. Please make sure you discuss the changes, using any of the above communication channels.

Think Internationalization and not Translation, when we say "translation" what we should really say is "internationalization", or i18n for short. We want to bring Unknown Horizons closer to Portuguese speaking users, but just translating a string from English to Portuguese won't work, there is no way to simple replace an English word for a Portuguese one. So the i18n effort envolves not only translating to the Portuguese language but also adapting the text so that it makes sense.

A word of caution: this doesn't mean changing the original meaning of a sentence, it means adding bits or pieces that will help make the translation more accurate.

Cultural

Translations should be as close as possible to the original intent and shouldn't diverge from it, nevertheless sometimes we have options available and we need to make decisions. The following topics cover some of the decisions that were made initially but are up to the translators to change if needed.

Everyone has a different background, every translator will bring his/her background into the work. This is something we can't avoid and we must accommodate for the differences in background and the impact they will have in the translation effort. Be mindful of the target audience, the Portuguese translation is players from Portugal and from those countries where the spoken Portuguese is close to the Portuguese spoken in Portugal, e.g. the Brazilian Portuguese has its own translation.

Colonizer (Colonizador:Povoador)

Any word around 'Colony' (colónia) in Portuguese usually brings up memories of the [Portuguese Colonial War] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Colonial_War). It's been decided that we should use other wording to avoid any conflicts:

  • Povoador instead of Colono
  • Povoação instead of Colónia

Note that this option is really basic and free of political connotation and it doesn't harm the main expression used in the game. The meaning stays as close as possible and the resulting Portuguese texts aren't awkward to read.

Pavillion (Pavilhão:Templo)

For Portuguese, I've chosen the term Pavilhão for the place where people will pray on the game. This is a direct translation from the English term Pavillion. This way the term is free of religious connotation, thus will not harm people's believes neither will remember of a particular religion/creed.

Words like church (igreja), temple (templo), etc., should be avoided.

Parson (Sacerdote:Padre/Pastor)

Trying to get an generic term for this is hard. The current options are pastor, vigário, sacerdote, cura, eclesiástico and reitor. The last three can just be removed as they are specific of catholic churches, the first two, though used in other religions are also much closer to the catholic church.

The term sacerdote ended up being the current choice since it is used often in literature to refer to any religious person that works at a temple or that helps the spirit or health of men, even if not related to any deity.

Portuguese Orthographic Treaty

Regardless of any personal feeling towards the treaty, we will try to follow it as much as possible. [The Portuguese Language Orthographic Treaty] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Language_Orthographic_Agreement_of_1990) has been put into law in 2010 and will be mandatory in schools in 2012 (school year of 2011/2012), currently (September, 2011), the treaty is used heavily in Portugal's media and we get ever more exposed to its changes.

Most of the changes are easy to follow but there are several "corner cases" that will require attention, also, the treaty only unifies how we write not how we speak or what the word mean to us, therefor though some words will be written the same in every country that signed the treaty, many will still be written differently and many do have different meanings. This is specially true with Brazilian Portuguese, so please make sure you are using the correct spelling and word when translating under the treaty.

Translation Status

Currently most strings have been translated and are under revision. Since the game is being developed and the original English strings will probably be updated it's hard to place a updated status in this wiki page, please see the statistics page in the [Pootle's portuguese section] (http://pootle.unknown-horizons.org/pootle.fcgi/pt/).

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