The collaborative translation system has been with BGA almost from the start to allow as many people as possible throughout the world to play together with no language barrier. We are quite happy and proud about it, but of course it's not perfect.
With more than 150 games - and translations happening in 35 languages - we tried to see what we could fix or do better.
1) With so many translations, fixing mistakes in validated translations has become tedious. Doing it manually when reported by players in the forums was slow and time consuming. So we decided to trust the community some more, and to allow players to fix validated strings directly if they have enough experience on BGA and on the game. Please be aware that fixing validated translations doesn't award any gift points, and should be done only to correct clear and obvious mistakes. It's best not to make changes you are not sure of, and always stay as close as possible to the original English text in meaning and style.
2) For some languages there is not a lot of translators and we wanted to try to make things easier, so we thought that it would be faster for translators to proofread and correct than to translate everything. So when possible (which means when there is no substitution parameter involved making the text dynamic), we will now propose a computer generated translation by default, and then translators will be able to either make changes to improve it as usual, or just to confirm it in one click if it's already good! These default translations will appear progressively in the weeks to come, and this new functionnality should allow us in the future to open the website in more languages for which we don't currently have enough players to bootstrap a translation, and maybe spark interest for players in these languages.
Let's be clear, this is absolutely not meant to replace the current community based translation system! We really need the translators help in translating dynamic strings and in proofreading the translations to have them meet the "human quality" level that creates a smooth and natural play experience.
3) Even with good intentions, some mistakes were made by translators making changes to the original English text. And that was really a bummer, because mistakes propagate to all languages afterwards... So for English, we decided to set up a validation step to avoid mistakes. If you spot something incorrect in the English version of the website or in an English text you are currently translating, you can look for that text in the "from English to English" translation system, and propose a change (with a comment!). This change will then be validated (or refused) by the BGA team.
4) Since we didn't think about setting up specific guidelines about punctuation, some translators added or removed final punctuation a little anarchically over the years, for example adding an ending dot for text used in buttons (Yikes! 😯 ). We homogenized that to get back to the intention of the developer in terms of meaning expressed through punctuation and clarity of the interface (a website is not a book). Now we also trigger a warning if the final punctuation is changed: translators reported some cases where it can be legitimate, so it can still be done, but please be careful with this, it should stay exceptional!
Thanks again to all translators from the community contributing their time to allow players from all over the world to enjoy playing board games in their native language!
Really. That's awesome! 😁
关于翻译系统的一些消息!
BGA几乎从一开始就采用合作翻译系统, 让全世界尽可能多的人在没有语言障碍的情况下一起游戏。
我们为此感到相当高兴和自豪, 但当然这并不完美。
随着 150多种游戏的进行--以及 35种语言的翻译--我们试图看看我们能解决什么或做得更好。
1)在这么多的翻译词条之下,改正错误的已验证翻译变得乏味。
由我们手动修正玩家在论坛报告的翻译错误进度缓慢又十分耗时。
所以我们决定给社区更多的信任, 如果玩家在 BGA 和游戏上有足够的经验, 就允许他们直接修正已验证的词条。
请注意, 修正已验证的翻译不会被授予任何礼品积分, 并且应该只纠正清楚而明显的错误。
没有十分的把握最好不要轻易改动, 并在改动时尽可能地保持与原来的英文文本一致的意义和风格。
2)对于某些缺乏翻译人员的语种 , 我们尝试简化操作。我们认为, 由翻译者校对并修正词条比自己全部翻译更快捷。
因此, 在可能的情况下 (这意味着没有替换参数使文本保持动态), 我们将在默认情况下给出机器翻译, 然后翻译人员能够进行更改以改进它, 或只是点击确认翻译。
这些默认翻译将在未来几周内逐步推出, 而这种新功能会允许我们以后以更多的语言打开网站, 尽管这些语种缺乏翻译者;也许这会激发玩家对这些语言的兴趣。
让我们明确一点, 这绝对不是为了取代目前基于社区的翻译系统!
我们的确需要翻译人员的帮助来翻译动态字符串和校对翻译, 使它们达到"人工翻译" 水平,从而创造流畅自然的游戏体验。
3)即使动机纯正, 翻译人员也有可能对英文原文进行错误修改。
而这确实是一个麻烦, 因为这些错误会传播到所有的语言..。
因此, 对于英语, 我们决定设置一个验证步骤以避免错误。
如果您在网站的英文版本或当前正在翻译的英文文本中发现不正确的内容, 您可以在 "从英文到英文" 中查找该文本, 并提出更改(请附上注释!)。
然后, BGA 团队将确认 (或拒绝) 此更改。
4)由于我们没有考虑设置有关标点符号的特定准则, 因此一些翻译人员随意地添加或删除句尾的标点符号, 例如在按钮文本中添加句号 (唉!
).
我们同样认为, 要回到开发者通过标点符号和清晰的界面表达的意图(网站不是一本书)。
现在, 如果更改了句尾的标点符号, 我们也会触发警告: 翻译人员报告了一些合法的情况, 所以仍然可以这么做, 但请小心, 这应该只作为个例!
再次感谢来自社区的所有翻译人员牺牲时间, 让来自世界各地的玩家以母语享受BGA!
真的
太棒啦!!