User:Tephlon

Very well then, I'll write something here.

Who, me?

I'm tephlon, or rather, that's my nick. Why tephlon? Well, my wife-to-be (in a few months, actually :)) seems to think that no problems ever stick on me, so she calls me "teflonmannen", which is "the teflon man" in Swedish. My own interpretation is that I have a non-stick memory. The "ph" instead of "f" is just... Well, I don't know. Leet? Whatever.

My real name is Stefan, and I'm born on the very last day of 1976. I'm the maintainer of the Swedish translation, and actually, one of the moderators on the Translations & Internationalization forum, even though I don't usually do or say very much on the forums. I live in Göteborg -- which is "Gothenburg" in, at least, English-speaking countries -- in Sweden, which really is called Sverige. And that's not Switzerland. But you knew that. I hope.

Anyway, since September 2004 I'm the maintainer of the Swedish translation, and for some reason, the progress of the Swedish translation has (unfortunately?) been quite coupled with my working career.

In 2004 I started my fourth year as a PhD student in astrophysics, and had for some time been really fed up with it. At some point during spring I was looking through the games at HappyPenguin.org, and I found Wesnoth. I liked it a lot from the start and recommended it to my SO, who, to my great astonishment, didn't hate computers so much that she didn't appreciate a good game. So we started playing.

In August, I looked into the Translations forum and noticed that the translation was pretty much unmaintained, and since I couldn't care less about my project I decided to try and do something about the translation. In a short time, the Swedish translation team, which basically consisted of me and Sanna, managed to do some great work on the translation. In fact, the Swedish translation was the first translation at 100%, and on September 11 we could proudly announce the 0.8.4 release in Swedish.

Late in December last year I quit my grad student position, and was without a job. During this period, which lasted for 8 months, I applied for 140 jobs, and in the meantime I worked on the translation.

Despite all the applications, I only got a job as a mailman, in August. As such I could often get home pretty early, so I could get some stuff done before my girlfriend got home from her job. Working as a mailman wasn't really what I wanted of course, but there wasn't much else to do. The Swedish working market really really really suck for people with university degrees. However, in the beginning of September I got a phone call from a company regarding a position I had applied for in february(!). And since the beginning of October I have a new job at an IT security company, at the one position I really wanted.

Unfortunately, this has proven somewhat bad for the translation. As it is, there isn't very much time left for Wesnoth anymore, considering that I also want to have time for taijutsu, lindy hop and my girlfriend. At the moment, I'm basically only trying to keep in sync with the updates in the trunk and the 1.0 branch.

Translation manifesto

I've been meaning to put down my thoughts on translating a game such as this, but this seems a bit harder than I thought.

From the start, I've wanted the translation to be consistent throughout all the text domains. This might seem obvious, but it's harder than it sounds. The msgid's in the po-files often come ouf of context, and when playing through a campaign it's not uncommon to stumble over some dialog which sounds really strange. So, I've come to view the translation process in three phases.

Phase one: bulk text

First, there is the work of getting the "bulk text" down. Choosing the word "bulk" might seem a but condescending, but it's really not, it's just what it is. It is hard, and often boring, work; not very rewarding. During this phase the aim is just to get the strings translated; just going through one string after another, and translate.

Phase two: proof-reading

The second part is the proof-reading. Everything which is committed has been proofread at least once. This can be pretty quick, but sometimes one just get stuck on some odd passage. At times it can be weeks before a translation of a single sentence, or even word, is finished, because of the three criteria a msgstr has to fulfill:

• It has to have the same meaning as the msgid.
• It has to sound good.
• It has to be consistent with the translation as a whole.

The first point can be discussed forever; is a more or less literal translation the best, or a complete rewrite which in the end conveys the same message? The Swedish translation goes something in between, and is really dependent on the second point. If a literal translation sounds good, the it ought to be used. Sometimes this is not possible, however, so the passage translated has to be reorganized. Then this has to sound good.

What does "sound good" mean, then? Well, firstly, the translation has to use expressions which are actually used in the language one is translating to. Secondly, it has to be written in a way which displays the "rhythm" in what is actually written or perhaps rather -- if it is a dialog -- spoken. If it is translation of a dialog between two or more characters, the translation has to sound like someone's actually talking.

Phase three: consistency

The third point is more administrative, since it is basically just to look up into how a certain string (for instance unit names) have been translated in before. At times this too can be quite troublesome, for instance when it comes to words like Guard, Guardsman and Sentinel, since Swedish has a hard time distinguishing between these.

Lather, rince, repeat

As I'm sure you understand, these three phases don't come linearly. They have to be mixed, minced and reiterated. The perfect translation is the one where you can't tell what is the original text and what is the translation; when you can hear a dialog as though someone is speaking inside your head; when you don't even think about it; when you don't notice what you read; when it effortlessly brings an image to mind, and enhances your own imagination of what is actually happening.

Translation tools

During the time I've maintained the translation, I've constantly developed and improved a few scripts that help me do this. I have two main scripts where the first one sync my local source repository with the main repository, and the second picks out what I've changed since the last time I committed anything.

wsync

#!/bin/sh

ROOTDIR=$HOME/Wesnoth

SRCDIR=$ROOTDIR/Source
WORKDIR=$ROOTDIR/Translations


[ "x$ROOTDIR" == x ] && exit 1
[ "x$SRCDIR" == x ] && exit 1
[ "x$WORKDIR" == x ] && exit 1

[ -d $SRCDIR ] || mkdir -p $SRCDIR



treesync () {
   [ $# -eq 2 ] || exit 1

   REPOS="$1"
   BRANCH="$2"

   echo -e "Syncing \033[01;32m$BRANCH\033[0m with \033[01;33m$REPOS\033[0m:\n"

   if [ -d $SRCDIR/$BRANCH ] ; then
      ( cd $SRCDIR/$BRANCH && svn update )
   else
      ( cd $SRCDIR && svn checkout $REPOS $BRANCH )
   fi

   echo
}



posync () {
   BRANCH="$1"

   for POFILE in $(find $SRCDIR/$BRANCH -name 'sv.po' | sort -s) ; do
      PODIR=${POFILE%*/sv.po}
      POTFILE="$(find $PODIR/ -name '*.pot')"
      DOMAIN="$(echo ${POTFILE##*/} | sed 's|\.pot$||')"

      if [ $(echo $POTFILE | grep -c .) -eq 0 ] ; then
         echo "Not pot file found in $PODIR."
      else
         echo -en "Syncing \033[01;32m$BRANCH/$DOMAIN\033[0m: "
         tput hpa 50
         echo -n "Merging... "

         if [ -f $WORKDIR/.LastCommit/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN/sv.po ] ; then
            msgmerge -q --update $WORKDIR/.LastCommit/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN/sv.po $POTFILE
         fi

         if [ -f $WORKDIR/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN/sv.po ] ; then
            msgmerge -q --update $WORKDIR/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN/sv.po $POTFILE
         else
            [ -d $WORKDIR/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN ] || mkdir -p $WORKDIR/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN
            msgmerge -q $POFILE $POTFILE > $WORKDIR/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN/sv.po
         fi

         tput hpa 50
         echo -n "Counting... "
         tput hpa 50
         msgfmt --statistics $WORKDIR/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN/sv.po -o /dev/null
      fi
   done
}



echo

treesync http://svn.gna.org/svn/wesnoth/trunk Wesnoth-trunk
treesync http://svn.gna.org/svn/wesnoth/branches/1.0 Wesnoth-1.0
treesync svn://svn.berlios.de/wescamp-i18n Wescamp

posync Wesnoth-trunk
posync Wesnoth-1.0
posync Wescamp

commit

#!/bin/sh

ROOTDIR=$HOME/Wesnoth

SRCDIR=$ROOTDIR/Source
WORKDIR=$ROOTDIR/Translations
COMMITDIR=${WORKDIR}/Commit


[ "x$ROOTDIR" == x ] && exit 1
[ "x$SRCDIR" == x ] && exit 1
[ "x$WORKDIR" == x ] && exit 1
[ "x$COMMITDIR" == x ] && exit 1

[ -d $COMMITDIR ] || mkdir -p $COMMITDIR
[ -d $COMMITDIR/Old ] || mkdir -p $COMMITDIR/Old

mv $COMMITDIR/*.tgz $COMMITDIR/Old 2> /dev/null

TEMPFILE=$(mktemp -t po-XXXXXX) || exit 2

TODAY=$(date +%Y%m%d)



pocommit () {
   BRANCH="$1"

   TARBALL="thisshouldnevermatchafilenameandseeificareifitwouldanyway"

   for POFILE in $(find $SRCDIR/$BRANCH -name 'sv.po' | sort -s) ; do
      POTFILE="$(find ${POFILE%*/sv.po}/ -name '*.pot')"
      DOMAIN="$(echo ${POTFILE##*/} | sed 's|\.pot$||')"

      [ -d $WORKDIR/.LastCommit/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN ] || mkdir -p $WORKDIR/.LastCommit/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN
      [ -f $WORKDIR/.LastCommit/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN/sv.po ] || touch $WORKDIR/.LastCommit/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN/sv.po

      msgmerge -q -o $TEMPFILE $WORKDIR/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN/sv.po $POTFILE && mv $TEMPFILE $WORKDIR/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN/sv.po || exit 3

      if [ -f $WORKDIR/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN/sv.po ] \
         && ! diff -q $WORKDIR/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN/sv.po $WORKDIR/.LastCommit/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN/sv.po 2>&1 > /dev/null \
         && ! diff -q $WORKDIR/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN/sv.po $POFILE > /dev/null ; then

         if [ -e "$TARBALL.tar" ] ; then
            TARFLAGS="rf"
         else
            TARFLAGS="cf"

            NUMBER=$(find $COMMITDIR -name "$BRANCH-$TODAY-*.tgz" -printf '%f\n' | sort -g | tail -1 | rev | cut -f1 -d'-' | rev | cut -f1 -d'.')
            [ x$NUMBER == x ] && NUMBER=0
            NUMBER=$((NUMBER + 1))
            TARBALLNAME="$(echo $BRANCH-sv-$TODAY-$NUMBER | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')"
            TARBALL="$COMMITDIR/$TARBALLNAME"

            echo -e "\033[01;33mCommitting changes ($TARBALLNAME.tgz):\033[0m"
         fi

         echo -en "---> \033[01;32m$BRANCH/$DOMAIN\033[0m"
         tput hpa 50
         msgfmt --statistics $WORKDIR/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN/sv.po -o /dev/null

         ( cd $WORKDIR/$BRANCH && tar $TARFLAGS $TARBALL.tar $DOMAIN/sv.po ) && cp $WORKDIR/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN/sv.po $WORKDIR/.LastCommit/$BRANCH/$DOMAIN/sv.po
      fi
   done

   if [ -e "$TARBALL.tar" ] ; then
      gzip "$TARBALL.tar" && mv "$TARBALL.tar.gz" "$TARBALL.tgz"
   else
      echo "No changes in $BRANCH."
   fi
}



pocommit Wesnoth-trunk
pocommit Wesnoth-1.0
pocommit Wescamp