Translation suggestion: Zone names

[AlexKhayrullin]

Something that has never been done in games I've played, but was very much done in manuals (at least the French ones) , is that Zone names were translated.

Just for fun, I tried to come up with French names for each Zone. Instead of translating all of the zones literally, I merely used the same convention: alliterative names, each letter is only used once. Russian and Ukrainian names are harder to come up with, but at least for the former, I think I can get some help ;) .

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uxLSd-nLglL0paquJ5uBfiXmtT2a_7LN7eW9BamPYwI/edit?usp=sharing

Is this something you guys think we could/should actually do as part of localizations? :) If so, then we'll probably need a flag in each language JSON used to tell whether the word ZONE is at the beginning or at the end (because the line with it is smaller)

[nkrapivin]

haha yes I was thinking about the exact same thing when making a template Russian.json file, "how do I type zone names?" :)

as for now I've left English names...

[zice-o-lantern]

Hi, a friend sent me the link for the french translations. As I am French, i can give some feedback on the translation. The translation is quite good but there is a problem. Saying "Zone du name zone" is very annoying as a French. It's not fluid. I'd request "Zone Name zone". Like, instead of "Zone des Vestiges vertige" I'd say "Vestiges Vertige Zone". I am not able to help more because, in french manual, they never translate the zone names, in France at least.

[AlexKhayrullin]

@Pumkin-dev In fact the French names were chosen to be like this as a reference to the time when they DID translate zone names in manuals:

Examples: http://info.sonicretro.org/index.php?title=File:Sonic1_SMS_EU_manual.pdf&page=20 http://info.sonicretro.org/index.php?title=File:Sonic2_SMS_EU_manual.pdf&page=28 https://info.sonicretro.org/index.php?title=File:Sonic_Chaos_SMS_EU_Manual.pdf&page=30 https://info.sonicretro.org/index.php?title=File:Sonic1_MD_EU_manual.pdf&page=20 https://info.sonicretro.org/index.php?title=File:Sonic2_MD_EU_manual.pdf&page=34

Here, they just dropped "Zone" : https://info.sonicretro.org/images/c/c7/Sonic3_MD_EU_manual.pdf :)

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I don't know about just putting "Zone" at the end, it looks like an anglicism to me, doesn't feel right.

Maybe, as a compromise, put "Zone:" at the beginning with a colon, or just give up on the word and just drop "Zone" from the French names altogether (to be perfectly honest, that's the option I considered first) ?

[zice-o-lantern]

If it is a reference to old manuals, it's fine. But a French reader would find this translation weird because french adaptations chose to drop translating literally zone names (for example, in Sonic 3D games, I've never read "Zone des collines vertes"). Not many people read the manual so if you are aiming for french players, they just would think that it was google translated. So what you can do is "Zone de zone name", "Zone name Zone" or "Zone : Zone Name". My preference is the second option because nowadays, the french players are used to english zone names. Although it's "du franglais", the players won't find this weird because in the end, in the official french adaptation, they don't even translate zone names

On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 5:13 PM AlexKhayrullin notifications@github.com wrote:

@Pumkin-dev https://github.com/Pumkin-dev In fact the French names were chosen to be like this as a reference to the time when they DID translate zone names in manuals:

Examples:

http://info.sonicretro.org/index.php?title=File:Sonic1_SMS_EU_manual.pdf&page=20

http://info.sonicretro.org/index.php?title=File:Sonic2_SMS_EU_manual.pdf&page=28

https://info.sonicretro.org/index.php?title=File:Sonic_Chaos_SMS_EU_Manual.pdf&page=30

https://info.sonicretro.org/index.php?title=File:Sonic1_MD_EU_manual.pdf&page=20

https://info.sonicretro.org/index.php?title=File:Sonic2_MD_EU_manual.pdf&page=34

Here, they just dropped "Zone" : https://info.sonicretro.org/images/c/c7/Sonic3_MD_EU_manual.pdf :)

I don't know about just putting "Zone" at the end, it looks like an anglicism to me, doesn't feel right.

Maybe, as a compromise, put "Zone:" at the beginning with a colon, or just give up on the word and just drop "Zone" from the French names altogether?

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[AlexKhayrullin]

But then, what I wrote down is merely a suggestion, things aren't set in stone, or won't be even when the translation will be done. It will be an external JSON file, subject to change. So we'll have the means to easily try every possibility in real conditions and see what works best :) . Anyhow, I get why you'd be reluctant to use not the translations themselves but their format.

Merci pour ton retour ;)

(thanks for your feedback #gratuitousFrench)

EDIT: a reference to the discussion is now written down in the Google document.

[zice-o-lantern]

De rien !

On Wed, Oct 7, 2020 at 7:24 PM AlexKhayrullin notifications@github.com wrote:

But then, what I wrote down is merely a suggestion, things aren't set in stone, or won't be even when the translation will be done. It will be an external JSON file, subject to change. So we'll have enough the means to easily try every possibility in real conditions and see what works best :) . Anyhow, I get why you'd be reluctant not to the translations themselves but to the format.

Merci pour ton retour ;)

(thanks for your feedback #gratuitousFrench)

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[AlexKhayrullin]

The mechanic for making "zone" smaller depending on where it is is in place. I'll let individual translators decide what to do with zone names, some chose to not translate them at all.