Ideas about multilingual support

[CloudiDust]

Currently I am thinking about translating the game into Chinese, but it seems that the game is lacking first class support for language selections?

(I actually have a translated version of Sunrider's first public beta (the one with the "linear hard coded combat system") on my harddisk, which works by directly replacing the English scripts. :P)

I am aware that renpy has a translation framework and I am going to use that this time. But we still need a way to choose languages in the game. That would require an interface change eventually.

Without access to the original graphic assets, and as I generally suck at graphics, for the time being, I am thinking about using simple locale auto-detection and a shortcut key combo to toggle English/Translated.

Also, if we are to support east Asian languages, we'd have to bundle a CJK font with the game. (Source Hei Sans is what I have in mind now.)

Is this a workable solution? If so I can try to implement it.

[vaendryl]

that sounds okay? I must warn you that making a translation of a game that's still in development is not recommended, as anything can and will change that will break you translation. I must suggest waiting until the game is finished, at which point proper support for language selection can be added.

if you don't much care about any of that you can translate as you please :)

[CloudiDust]

I have not used renpy's translation framework so I am not sure how it holds up against source text changes. (GNU gettext does a fine job here, and Wesnoth uses it.)

But yes I don't much care about breakage anyway. :)

[vaendryl]

I don't think we can give any real support or advice in the use of ren'py's translation framework... I'd recommend asking on the lemmasoft forums for tips and tricks as we've obviously never had to use it.

[CloudiDust]

Thanks. Here I am wondering whether my changes could be merged into this repo if implemented. (The initialization code would be modified, and there will be a dir containing the zh_CN translation files.)

If it is considered premature to merge that now, I will maintain them in my fork for the time being.

[vaendryl]

as it's not an official translation (supported by Love in Space) I don't think that will ever be an option - unless you make some sort of arrangement with the project lead (Sam).

the easiest way to reach him might be a forum PM or through twitter.

[CloudiDust]

Thanks, I'll contact him once I think the translation is ready to be included in the official distribution. For now I'll maintain my own fork and track the changes in this repo.