How to be a community translator

With the last patch we added a community translator which allows selected players to provide translations for the game. In this post we will explain how this works and how you can participate.

General information

We have created the community translator to allow the community to provide translations for the game that we cannot provide ourselves. However, access to this tool is limited to selected players to ensure a certain quality of the translations.

For anyone who wants to participate, the following should be said in advance:

• Texts you get access to are for your own translation purposes only.
• If you want to use information from the translation tool for other purposes (e.g. Wiki), please contact us before.
• The translation effort is extremely high! Currently about 40,000 words or 50 unformatted pages of text.
• You will be told a lot of content that you may not have played before, which could negatively affect your enjoyment of the game.
• Translating the game is voluntary work and is not paid.

If you are still interested in translating the game or want to know how our internal tool works, we invite you to finish this article.

The translation tool

The translation tool can only be used after we have activated it for your account. Also the translations you have access to here are limited. So you can only translate into the languages we have activated you for, including English as source language, which you cannot edit. (Unless you are also a translator for English).

After we have unlocked you, you may need to log into the game again for the account changes to take effect. After that you can use the chat command /translate to call up the translation tool, which looks like this:

In the top line you can search and filter the translations you want to edit. For this purpose you can enter a specific translation key in the field "Search Key" (supports SQL placeholders such as '%') or enter a text passage in "Search Text" which should appear in the original English version or in your target language. You can also choose for which target language you want to search for translations and in which state the translation should be. Possible states are here:

• All: All translations.
• Missing: The translation does not yet exist in the target language.
• Waiting: Already translated but not yet confirmed by us.
• Approved: Translated and verified translations.

The search in the text fields is triggered by pressing Enter and in the selections by changing the selection.

Under the search settings, you will find the result list of the translations found. (Limited to a maximum of 1000 results). The results list contains the translation key, the English source version and the most recent target version of the translation. If no translation exists, the text in the target version is empty, or if the translation has not yet been confirmed, the translation is displayed in orange.

If you want to add a new translation or correct an existing one, you can click on the "edit" button. This will open an editor for this translation to the right of the list.

In the editor, the translation key of the current translation is displayed at the top, followed by the English source version. Below that there are two large text input fields that you as a translator can edit yourself. One is the Description field where you can read or enter additional information relevant for all or your translation. This field is for information like meaning of placeholders, other translation keys that reuse this translation or context information that is relevant for this translation. By clicking on "Save" next to "Description" your changes will be saved in this field.

Finally, the "Edit" input field is for the actual translation. Here you can store the translation for the English source text in your target language. If placeholders are provided for this text, they must be the same as in the source text. If you are satisfied with your entered translation, you can finally save it by clicking "Save" next to "Edit".

Please note, however, that if you click on "Save" next to "Description" or "Edit", changes in the other field will be lost!

What happens after translating

After the translations have been submitted, they will be checked by us to ensure that the placeholders have been used correctly and that no incorrect translations are included in the game.

Afterwards we can add translations to the game and if there are sufficient translations for a new language, we activate this language to be able to select it in the game.

What needs to be translated

Finally, we give you a list of translation keys that are especially important and should be translated first if possible. A language that contains these translations, we can also activate as unfinished translated languages.

In the following table you will find the search key to be used in the "Search Key", a short explanation what these translations are for and how many translations are involved.

In addition to these, it would of course be very desirable if the remaining translations were also available, otherwise players would receive the original English version instead of their set language for Missing Translations, which they might not understand.

If you want to support us by submitting translations as well, please contact us on our discord server!