Tahgemah Re-ko-ah! (Please Help us Translate Riven)
We’re about as good with translations as Gehn’s bumbling servant, Cho. If you speak a language other than English, we need your help!
As we mentioned last week, we intend to localize our game, and we cannot do it without your support. The original Riven was localized into a few languages, but not nearly as many as we would like, and those localizations were often sloppy or contained errors. With this in mind, we have turned to GULP to help us crowdsource our own localization effort! Check out our GULP page here.
GULP is an awesome project started by Lewis Johnston (also known as Orange Haired Boy), with the goal of localizing various Myst-related projects into as many languages as possible. It’s all free, you just need to set up an account and get translating! You can either submit new translations, or vote on translations that have already been submitted.
With your help, we’ll hopefully be able to include many languages beyond just English in our final release of the game.
Update: there were a few issues with signing up, they have since been worked out. Everything should be working smoothly now! Thanks again to OHB for working so tirelessly on the site.
May 27th, 2014 at 10:10 am
As I mentioned before, I’ve translated a good part of Riven on greek language.
If anyone out there considers helping with greek translation, he/she can email me at immortalwind@live.com so as to agree on some particular terms, names etc.
You can also login at the website and “check” on the translations I’ve already completed because the need at least 2 “ok s” (verifications) to be finalised.
Thank you.
May 27th, 2014 at 12:40 pm
I’m definitely in. I already translated a few passages into French. There were plenty of huge mistakes in other Gulp translations. You can count on me, French Grammar and linguistics are my thing.
May 27th, 2014 at 1:50 pm
The existing translations you don’t have the rights to, correct?
May 27th, 2014 at 3:47 pm
Am I the only one who isn’t getting his confirmation email?
May 27th, 2014 at 7:51 pm
Daniel, you weren’t the only one, but I kicked it. Check your email, and thanks for participating! 🙂
May 28th, 2014 at 2:47 am
The initiative is awesome, but I can’t help but feel like the system is kind of odd. This should clearly be made as a wiki, to foster collaboration. The way this system works now, it turns into a list of suggestions that appear to be competing and need to be voted on. I added some translations for Swedish, but it would have been much better if I could simply have offered suggestions for changes to the existing, and overall good, translation suggestions.
May 28th, 2014 at 9:16 am
About 3 years ago i had sent to you german books and speek of atrus and other actors. Do you remember ?
May 28th, 2014 at 11:01 am
What will you do with languages where there is a complete translation with only a few voted parts? Would someone analyze the parts where there are several translations? Would you include the translation with some kind of warning?
May 28th, 2014 at 1:35 pm
We have not yet finalized our localization plans, so this is definitely subject to change, but for the time being I’d say that we will only be including languages that have been fully translated and approved. That said, we’re open to releasing further language packs or patches beyond the game’s initial release.
May 28th, 2014 at 3:19 pm
Just had some fun translating a bunch of things into German. Thanks OHB for fixing the account confirmation mail 🙂
Any chance of seeing D’ni or Rivenese as translatable languages? 😛
May 30th, 2014 at 6:46 am
dgelessus: it’s a good idea!
Tobr: you can comment on existing translations and offer your own by submitting an alternative. The voting is there because you might not be as good as you think.
May 30th, 2014 at 12:42 pm
Hi.
I was wondering if it was possible to reject a translation submitted after another one won.
Because what if the previous winning translation was better than the new pending one ? It will stay in an uncompleted state, right ?
May 30th, 2014 at 1:02 pm
Good point. Maybe make it so the original one then requires two additional likes to be winning again, but the pending ones still only require two to win? Or perhaps add a “dislike” feature, so that the translation with the highest final “like score” will always be winning?
May 30th, 2014 at 3:37 pm
Once there is a winning translation, the item it marked as complete. If a new one is suggested, it remains marked as complete. New ones can win and replace old ones that has won with enough likes. In other words, once marked as complete, always marked as complete.
May 30th, 2014 at 3:54 pm
I was induced in error by the color of the dot next to the translation which becomes yellow again when a new translation is submitted.
Thanks for answering.
May 30th, 2014 at 6:53 pm
How do things like these happen then? http://gulp.orangehairedboy.com/project_item/iid/15f0463266175128f6907e5540106ee5/lid/8
The first translation had two likes, won, and the item got marked complete. Then I suggested a new translation, and the item was marked yellow again. Shouldn’t it have stayed green in that case?
May 31st, 2014 at 4:43 pm
Yeah, I can see how that’s confusing. That one in-particular exists in a weird state where it’s both Pending and Complete. It’s complete in that there’s a winning translation, but it’s pending in that there’s a new contender. Right now, however, if the content was exported for use in the game, the winning translation would be the one that’s included.
SFEcheif brings up a valid point though. The dot color changes to yellow when it should probably be green…or perhaps it needs to be simultaneously green and yellow. Hmm.
All I know for sure is that sure is room for improvement. If I ever get around to completing the next version this will be addressed. 🙂
May 31st, 2014 at 5:23 pm
Ah, that makes sense.
And the comment section is getting even narrower. Let’s see how deep we can nest replies 😀
May 31st, 2014 at 9:43 pm
Would there be any interest in adding an Esperanto option to the list of languages for the game? I ask because there’s a large Esperanto presence on the internet, and it often overlaps with the gaming/computing crowd. For example, there’s an Esperanto localization in Minecraft, even a few dedicated servers.
I’ve been speaking Esperanto for over 10 years and think it could bring even more interest to the project 🙂
June 1st, 2014 at 12:23 am
Done! You’ll need to go into your profile and list Esperanto as a language you speak. Then you’ll see it as an option in the Riven project. I’ll spend some time later to copy over some common content that doesn’t need translating.
June 1st, 2014 at 6:13 pm
Great, thank you! I’ve already started. I also put this project out there on one of the main Esperanto sites to get some help and so more people know about this remake.
June 2nd, 2014 at 12:47 am
Awesome. Got a link you can share?