Translation Guide
Contents
Introduction
Translations are language files located in the languages/ folder. A language file is a simple text-based file with the .lng extension. You may open it using a simple text editor like Notepad, Vim, Programmer's Notepad, or Notepad++. Once a new .lng file has been put in the languages/ directory, the corresponding new translation will be detected automatically.
As you'll see in this article, translating the game to other languages is a very straightforward process.
File format
Once you open a .lng file, you'll see something like that:
// Meta data LANG_LANGUAGE "English" LANG_AUTHOR "Alexandre" LANG_LASTUPDATE "2009-07-20" LANG_COMPATIBILITY "0.1.3" // Colors COLOR_P1 "0077ff" COLOR_P2 "ff7700" COLOR_P3 "ff0000" COLOR_INPUT "aaaaaa" COLOR_SPECIAL "ffff00" // Main menu MENU_1PGAME "1P GAME" MENU_CUSTOMQUESTS "CUSTOM QUESTS" MENU_TUTORIAL "TUTORIAL" MENU_LANGUAGE "CHANGE LANGUAGE" MENU_CREDITS "CREDITS" MENU_EXIT "EXIT" // and the file goes on...
This is the English language file. It's a list of key/value pairs, each per line. The first word of the line is the key and the text that secedes it is the value. Lines starting with // are comments (meaning that they're ignored by the game engine).
Now, take a look at the Spanish language file:
// Meta data LANG_LANGUAGE "Español" LANG_AUTHOR "Lainz" LANG_LASTUPDATE "2009-07-23" LANG_COMPATIBILITY "0.1.3" // Colors COLOR_P1 "0077ff" COLOR_P2 "ff7700" COLOR_P3 "ff0000" COLOR_INPUT "aaaaaa" COLOR_SPECIAL "ffff00" // Main menu MENU_1PGAME "1P JUEGO" MENU_CUSTOMQUESTS "PARTIDAS" MENU_TUTORIAL "TUTORIAL" MENU_LANGUAGE "IDIOMAS" MENU_CREDITS "CREDITOS" MENU_EXIT "SALIR" // and the file goes on...
As you can easily notice, only the values of each key/value pair have been translated.
Special features
Constants
Each key/value pair defines a constant. In the examples above, MENU_LANGUAGE stands for CHANGE LANGUAGE (in English) or IDIOMAS (in Spanish). You can obtain the corresponding value for the key MENU_LANGUAGE by writing $MENU_LANGUAGE.
Special characters
You may include special characters in your messages.
Character | Effect |
---|---|
\n | New line |
\" | Double quote |
\\ | Backslash |
Color tags
Text written inside a <color=RGB_HEX_CODE> ... </color> tag will be colored when displayed to the user. RGB_HEX_CODE is the hexadecimal RGB code of the color you want to get (so, for example, ff0000 is red). You don't really need to know the fancy details, but it's good to know that this feature exists.
You can also combine color tags with constants. Let's say that you have the following key/value pairs somewhere in your translation file:
COLOR_INPUT "aaaaaa" COLOR_SPECIAL "ffff00" TUTORIAL_2_TITLE_2 "SPINDASH" TUTORIAL_2_MSG_2 "Do you know the <color=$COLOR_SPECIAL>spindash</color> move? Hold <color=$COLOR_INPUT>DOWN</color>, press <color=$COLOR_INPUT>JUMP</color> and then release the <color=$COLOR_INPUT>DOWN</color> button."
This is the result:
I want to help!
If you want to help the game by translating it to your language, just send your .lng file to alemartf(at)gmail.com. Please test it before sending to us! We will probably accept it provided that the project hasn't been translated to your language yet. Please note that translators must keep their .lng files up to date. The game is still in development and new texts may be included anytime (we will tell you by e-mail when it happens, though).
See also: Work Positions