Version 14 (modified by Stan, 3 years ago) ( diff )

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For specific (i.e. non-English) name strings, see wiki:SpecificNames. For other user-facing texts in the public repository, see wiki:EnglishStyleGuide.

This page contains documentation to help you localize (translate) the game.

Translating Texts

We are currently using Transifex to translate the game texts. To start translating the game, create an account in Transifex and ask to join a translation team (or create a new one) at https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/0ad/

Teams are usually open, except on critical moments, like right before a release. So it should be pretty easy to join a team.

New language requests have to be approved by the WFG team. As we prefer to avoid duplicate work, new languages are only accepted when they differ from existing languages. F.e. standard Polish is assumed to come from Poland, so we don't accept the language "pl_PL" to be added, as it would just be a duplicate of "pl". On the other hand, there are big differences between the Portuguese in Brazil vs Portugal, so we allow the "pt_BR" language. If we denied your language, and you believe it's different from the non nation-specific language, please contact us with some proof your language is different.

Testing translations

It's important to test translations in game, as it might reveal some wrong translations. Note that right-to-left scripts aren't supported yet, and some languages might need additional fonts.

Translations are pulled regularly from Transifex, you can check rather recent translation work when you use the development version of the game. See BuildInstructions for more info.

To test even more recent translations under the development version, you must place your PO files in the right l10n folders, such as binaries/data/l10n/ for the engine PO file and binaries/data/mods/public/l10n/ for the PO file of the main mod. Your PO files should follow the naming convention ‘<locale code>.<mod name>.po’ (‘engine’ being the mod name for the engine), but as long as the prefix is ‘<locale code>.’ (e.g. ‘de.’ or ‘en_GB.’), it should work.

Tinygettext, the library responsible for loading translation files and providing the translation for any given English string, has a feature that shows a warning in the standard error output about English strings for which no translation was found. These warning are disabled by default. If you want to enable these messages, edit your user.cfg file and change the tinygettext.debug settings to true.

See also Implementation of Internationalization and Localization, Localization.

Localizing Images

If you want to replace a certain game image from the GUI with a different image for your locale:

  1. Locate the image in the sources. Lets say that the image is at binaries/data/mods/public/images/image.png.
  2. Create the image that you want to load instead.
  3. Ask that your localized image be put in binaries/data/mods/public/images/l10n/<locale code>/image.png.

At run time, when the game is using the locale with the locale code specified in the path (such as ‘de’ for German), your image will be loaded instead.

Additional Instructions for Language Teams

Some teams have more instructions available for their specific language – please read them as well if your language is on the list. If there aren't any special instructions for your language yet, you are welcome to add some if you find them useful.

Note: See TracWiki for help on using the wiki.