Map Objectives Translation Webpage + Tutorials Forum

[Swift]

I have 2 suggestions to make. I bet I'm better received writing a topic about it here, then I would be on the steam forums. So here I go!

Tutorials Forum:
Our web- and forumadmin should add a 'Tutorials' forums under 'TF2 General Mapping Discussion' to submit our tutorials. I have created a small one about '[TUTORIAL] Custom Map Objective(s) (multiple languages)'. It would be nice to see them grouped together. Remarks or Questions would always be welcome.

Map Objectives Translation Webpage:
This tutorial brought me to an idea. (first read the tutorial in order to understand what I'm saying here)

What if...
What if someone could write some code to create a webpage where you could paste your mapname & english objectives in. The code would then translate the english objectives into multiple languages, create the appropriat .txt's (see tutorial I wrote) and .zip them for download.

Ofcourse there has to be someone both capable and inclined to do this... That's why I'm suggesting it here for everbody to read. Who knows?

This webpage could be a index.php hosted in http://www.tf2maps.net/mapdescription/

Cheers, guys

 

[drp]

Swift, the tutorials forum sounds like an awesome idea.
I do have a few questions about the translation suggestion.

I read the tutorial and if i read it right, by simply putting files with the approriate name, the game will translate them itself? or does the english description need to be translated by hand by the map maker?

 

[Alexforcefive]

You need to put the translation in the relevant text file

 

[drp]

Thank alex, I guess I didn't read it correctly.

 

[Swift]

Yes. What Alex said. I didn't write the tutorial completely right. I'll edit it. Sorry.

EDIT:
I see the Tutorials Forums is allready up and running. Just a remark: re-sticky the '[TUTORIAL] Get starting mapping before the SDK update!' thread untill the SDK Update gets handed out.

 

[Novacane]

Map Objectives Translation Webpage:
This tutorial brought me to an idea. (first read the tutorial in order to understand what I'm saying here)

What if...
What if someone could write some code to create a webpage where you could paste your mapname & english objectives in. The code would then translate the english objectives into multiple languages, create the appropriat .txt's (see tutorial I wrote) and .zip them for download.

Automatic translations are very complicated. This post here pretty much hits the nail on the head about translations. The Google Translator is probably your best bet for now. And even that isn't perfect, as you can see from a test I did of 2Forts Objs from english to german: http://64.233.179.104/translate_c?hl=en&langpair=en|de&u=http://nova37.com/langtest2.html

It's possible to write a php script that will pull the translations off of the google translator but, as you can see from above, the translations would have errors in them.

 

[Novacane]

I tried some things and came up with a rough translator using google's language tools as the engine. It's still rather buggy, unreliable and the charset encoding is still fubar but, I guess it's a start.

http://hd.clanservers.com/langtrans.php

I have some test text in there (2Fort's obj text) so you can see how it works.

 

[Swift]

That's very impressive so far. I'm guessing google doesn't translate into more languages such as dutch and others? :/

As far as how good translations are, I wouldn't mind them being a little shobby. I think people will understand what is being said, most of the times, since it is their native language.

Only 3 things left:
- full mapname inputbox
- create .txt's
- .zip or .rar those .txt's for download

Nice work so far. This could be accomplished.

 

[Novacane]

Yeah the google translator is somewhat limited in that it can only translate a few languges. I've found some out there that can do more but, ill have to do some digging around.

I'm also thinking of using a database to store the translations after each translation so there can be more done to the data as far as output (output to textfile then zipped up and set out as a download) and multiple translation engines can be used.

Currently I just have a database storing the original text and displaying it for each translation.

Also, I had to use my TF2 server's free website I got with the server because my main webhost didn't allow includes to external files so it may become a resource issue if to many features are implemented and used often.

 

[drp]

dont worry about it. if resources become an issue, id be willing to get a beefy dedicated machine.

 

[Swift]

Thanks for doing this, Novacan. You're helping out alot, if not ALL, mappers out there. This would kick-ass in a working version!