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Rutseg
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Joined: 26 Dec 2002
Posts: 20
Location: Spain

PostPosted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 12:16 pm   

CMUD Translation
 
I'm worried about the translation of CMUD. I've some questions about it.
On zMUD the translation capability was added only on newer versions (since 6.06 to be exactly). This adds some difficulty as the way it implement it was not the better it could be, and some labels were missing to translate and a lot of them were defined on the form with a good size for english but are short for spanish (the language translation I support).

I think a lot of people would be interested to see a good translation of CMUD, at least for spanish, as we can see the spanish translation of zMUD have been downloaded more than 1000 times since its first version on Oct-2004.

I know by Zugg that beta version of CMUD will not have translation, but, will it have support for it? will be the code designed from start thinking on future translation?
I think this is a good oportunity to improve the client on this way as any time before, as you are planning to improve some other new utilitys on CMUD that were difficult to improve on zMUD before.

Also a subforum for translation would be apreciated so could be done some good discussion about translations, support and improve them.
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Zugg
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Joined: 25 Sep 2000
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Location: Colorado, USA

PostPosted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 6:36 pm   
 
The translation ability added to zMUD was a real kludge. As you mentioned, labels are missing, and some stuff can't be translated at all. It's a real mess. I think Rorso would agree with this ;) Even with his excellent translation tools to help, it's still a mess and is probably why there have been so few translations made for zMUD.

As you mentioned CMUD will not have translation in the first beta version. The reason for this is that the first beta version of CMUD will still be using zMUD modules such as the mapper and database module. Since I don't want to use the poor zMUD translation method in CMUD, there is no way to do translation in CMUD until all of the modules have been rewritten (including the mapper). This will take a while.

It's a bit too early to talk about how I'm planning translation in CMUD. I still need to evaluate some 3rd party tools that might make this easier. But I can say that translation in CMUD will be totally different than zMUD. I want it to be more database driven than the zMUD system. I also want better unicode support.

But as I said, it's really too early to design a system. Because translation only effects a small fraction of zMUD users, I want to get the basic version of CMUD released for people to play with and not delay it for weeks just to design a translation system. The new code should be modular enough to handle most anything that we come up with.
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Rorso
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Joined: 14 Oct 2000
Posts: 1368

PostPosted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 7:07 pm   
 
Zugg wrote:
The translation ability added to zMUD was a real kludge. As you mentioned, labels are missing, and some stuff can't be translated at all. It's a real mess. I think Rorso would agree with this ;) Even with his excellent translation tools to help, it's still a mess and is probably why there have been so few translations made for zMUD.

There's about 3000 properties to translate :-) and I think that alone is pretty discouraging when you start translating. Even if you design it all better this huge work load will still be there, unfortunately. However the ability to not mess up the layout would make it a more fun work.

Also people who make translations probably know english quite well already. That is when you make a translation you do a work that you don't really need yourself(then again I am using the Swedish version of zMUD Mr. Green).
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Rorso
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 7:18 pm   Re: CMUD Translation
 
Rutseg wrote:

Also a subforum for translation would be apreciated so could be done some good discussion about translations, support and improve them.

I think alot of discussions could be kept on the general or developers forum. After all we are quite few who work on zMUD translations. However if more start to translate then a sub forum would be great :).
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Rutseg
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Joined: 26 Dec 2002
Posts: 20
Location: Spain

PostPosted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 8:42 pm   
 
Well, I take care about it, I only wanted to be sure that you take in mind translations from start Very Happy, and I'm happy to see you have a plan for it.

The suggestion of the subforum was also for improve communication between users and translators to improve it, not only for tech discussions.

On Spain we are known for our bad bad english, in fact, all, every all, new film that arrives on our country are doubled, only maybe 5 or 10% of cinemas plays them on V.O. So I supose it's a big barrier for this kind of users having an english MUD, they not know how to take any of the advanced features of zMUD, and the only reason there are not a big fraction of zMUD users is because there are only a few and little spanish MUDs, but we spect this would change on a while, and may be CMUD could help with that Mr. Green.
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Rorso
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Joined: 14 Oct 2000
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 5:42 pm   
 
Wow your translation has a lot more downloads than my Swedish translation has Mr. Green. I have reconsidered this a bit. Having a translation sub forum might actually not be such a bad idea even with so few translations. It could very well make some people interested in trying to write translations. Getting feedback from users would be good as well.

By the way have you gotten any emails from users of your translation? I wonder how much the search engines bump those download statistics. So far noone has emailed me about errors in the translation I made.
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Zugg
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Joined: 25 Sep 2000
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 7:39 pm   
 
Actually, the only emails I have gotten about translation are from both of you :)

Honestly, this is why translation gets a lower priority. Back when I added it to zMUD I thought it was a big deal, and the response was very low. Given how much time it took to even kludge zMUD to handle it, I'm not sure it was worth it. Do it's been a bit discouraging for me.

But maybe with a better system in CMUD there will be more people who do translations.
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Rorso
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Joined: 14 Oct 2000
Posts: 1368

PostPosted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 7:56 pm   
 
Zugg didn't Joker email you?(the one that made the Italian translation). Actually he emailed me while I was working on the translation utility asking how to get it running. Also reported some bugs. So we're 3 translators :P
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Zugg
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Joined: 25 Sep 2000
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Location: Colorado, USA

PostPosted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 8:13 pm   
 
Yes, that's true...I forgot about him. It took him a long time to do the Italian version. Thanks for the correction.

But I've never heard from any "users" either looking for translations or asking questions about the translation. I always assumed that the people who might have trouble with the translation might not speak English and would end up contacting the person who did the translation. So if you haven't gotten any emails either, I guess either people are happy, or maybe they just don't know who to contact ;)

Anyway, I think the point of this thread is well taken...an easier translation system in CMUD would be better all around.

Sorry I can't make the new system compatible. The strings that you'll need to translate will be different too. I know you guys have put a lot of work into the existing system, and I feel bad about all of that work being redone in CMUD, but I think it will be worth it in the long run.
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Rutseg
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Joined: 26 Dec 2002
Posts: 20
Location: Spain

PostPosted: Sat Jan 21, 2006 2:15 pm   
 
Well, I think the reason why people didn't enter and ask about translation is, as you say, here, the web is all in english, so people only understand in some cases thinks like download, forums, etc... even if they understand, a lot of them doesn't have the courage to write in english because often people joke about.
But the most important is that I think people simply doesn't know that they have a translation for zMUD!
I've done some little publicity of the translation on Reinos de Leyenda, and since they know the translation and they know well how to contact me, I got some apreciated feedback, but all was from my own MUD.

I think for zMUD it was better to distribute the language files (there are few now) with the instalation package and offer people to select instalation language (even for the instalation process and the client) as in some other programs. It could be better also to allow download the language package during the instalation so the official distribution in english remains little. This also adds recognized credit from Zuggsoft to the translations, so more people would like to use the translation, now for a lot of people the translation seems more of a hack of the zMUD client that part of it (download the zip, uncompress on the programs file, etc...).

It's a lot of work, but if it values the effort, and I think it does, I'm very proud to do it all again Very Happy. And I can contribute rorso for reprogramming the translator if he needs any help, when it becomes the moment. Or possibly the new translation has other better methods to mantain, would be another package of the future package server? Rolling Eyes
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Rutseg Martillo de Piedra
http://pusa.uv.es/rl/
telnet://pusa.uv.es:5001
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Rorso
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Joined: 14 Oct 2000
Posts: 1368

PostPosted: Sat Jan 21, 2006 7:26 pm   
 
Zugg wrote:
Yes, that's true...I forgot about him. It took him a long time to do the Italian version. Thanks for the correction.

But I've never heard from any "users" either looking for translations or asking questions about the translation. I always assumed that the people who might have trouble with the translation might not speak English and would end up contacting the person who did the translation. So if you haven't gotten any emails either, I guess either people are happy, or maybe they just don't know who to contact ;)

I noticed my email was nowhere to be found. Added it to my website but perhaps there should be some link at the downloads as well?

Rutseg wrote:
Well, I think the reason why people didn't enter and ask about translation is, as you say, here, the web is all in english, so people only understand in some cases thinks like download, forums, etc... even if they understand, a lot of them doesn't have the courage to write in english because often people joke about.

When it comes to my translation project it isn't too odd it hasn't many users. Most swedes know English pretty well I believe so they probably rather use the default language. I use the translated version myself though.

Quote:
But the most important is that I think people simply doesn't know that they have a translation for zMUD!
I've done some little publicity of the translation on Reinos de Leyenda, and since they know the translation and they know well how to contact me, I got some apreciated feedback, but all was from my own MUD.

Yeah that might also be a reason. Also I believe there's only a few non English games out there(where the ingame language isn't English). Actually let's check the MUD Connector:

Swedish MUDs: 0 (but I know of one. Guess it isn't in the MUD Connector).
Spanish MUDs: 8
Italian MUDs: 11
German MUDs: 12

A more interesting question is how many players these games have.
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