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I would like to improve the Russian Translation.
21-04-2015, 05:14 PM
Post: #1
I would like to improve the Russian Translation.
Greetings to everyone on Ndemic forum. This is gonna be a long post.

When I first started playing Plague Inc. on iOS, I happened to overlook that there even was an option to switch game language. I'm russian, but typically disregard localisations in games, as lots of us with sufficient english do. After a bit of investigation I had to sum up that the translation was, unfortunately, about close to what I would've expected.

After pirating (I confess) Evolved 0.8.6.7 to see the changes (completed everything in vanilla already), I have to say that it is a great improvement to the franchise, well, except the localization is the same.

Honestly, I feel like a bit prejudiced when it comes to /ru localisations. Some professionally made ones are decent, very few are even better than the original (typically when original quality is lacking), and the overwhelming majority ranges bad to horrible. On the bright side, the worst problem is usually the voice acting, which doesn't matter here.

To put it plainly, I'm dissatisfied with the most of it. I would never say though that the authors of the existing translation are incompetent and did bad job. They've made the game playable for the russian playerbase, and they voluntarily spent their time and effort for this. There is not as little text in this game at all, contrary to a possible first impression.

While it is almost completely sufficient for bare understanding (I had a hard time guessing whether it's so, as I already knew what the original text meant, and the game interface is itself pretty intuitive), it disregards the "feel of the language", as well as common sense sometimes. I'm perfectly aware that those are personal matters and my variants of translations can appear unfitting and awkward for someone else.

I prefer holistic approach to translating. When I rolled with cheats enabled through the trait descriptions and popups, there were a lot of cumbersome and verbose parts that could be laconic and nice. Some descriptions and titles were pointless or even misleading, instead of being clear and functional. There were a lot of tiringly ubiquitous english syntax patterns with russian words, the phenomenon which we are used to from school days through entire life. EN and RU are too different in syntax to avoid heavy paraphrasing, while keeping the language true to its essence and satisfying to read. While I scrolled through suggestions, there were a lot of instances with many versions but none of them capturing the main idea. I feel it is often better gameplay-wise to paraphrase and/or cut descriptions rather radically, than to make word-for-word translation a priority.

I've already made some suggestions on the translations lab, but I felt that wouldn't do much, and there's more I could do to make the game better. There wasn't any trait descriptions within the lists, for example. I would gladly translate the entire game from a single spreadsheet of original strings, and then leave the result for your approvers to check.

I look forward that my enthusiasm comes to use. I can't boast to be a professional translator, but I have some experience already, as well as that steady belief that I could've done it better. See this wall of carefully written text as an attempt to prove my language capabilities.
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22-04-2015, 07:55 PM
Post: #2
RE: I would like to improve the Russian Translation.
Have you seen the translation project page?

http://translation.ndemiccreations.com/p...nc-evolved
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23-04-2015, 05:33 PM
Post: #3
RE: I would like to improve the Russian Translation.
(22-04-2015 07:55 PM)Scratchthegro Wrote:  Have you seen the translation project page?

http://translation.ndemiccreations.com/p...nc-evolved

I already mentioned I did, I found it lacking in the way that most text isn't present there.
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27-04-2015, 11:03 AM
Post: #4
RE: I would like to improve the Russian Translation.
Hi there, thanks for your thoughts.

All translations will all be added to the translation site. At the moment, all the strings that are translated on the PC version should be on there? Apart from possibly the Santa's Little Helper scenario.

If translations have been approved and you don't think they are correct, then you can "create an issue". That way you notify the proofreader that this should be reconsidered. If something hasn't been approved, then people should be voting/suggesting the best translation.

Hope that makes sense.
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