HelpUsTranslate

Mistakes in existing Translations

If you notice a translation error, please let us know about it on the bug tracker (bugs.introversion.co.uk).

Remember to let us know which language, the incorrect phrase and the correct translation. A screenshot would be really helpful.

Translation Tools (Available from Alpha 14)

If you would like to look a further under the hood, and maybe contribute your own fixes or translations, it can be useful to enable the translator tools.

Translator Assist

In preferences.txt ( On Windows, %APPLOCALDATA%\Introversion\LastStarship\preferences.txt and ~/Library/Application Support/LastStarship/preferences.txt on Mac OS X ) there is a preference called TranslatorAssist .

If you set this true, it will enable two hot keys in the game:

• Pressing Alt will display the English text instead of the currently loaded language. Actually this is implemented by temporarily loading the English language strings and then, when Alt is released, reloading the language.
• Pressing Ctrl will display the name of the key instead of the actual translated phrase (or English fallback).

Contributing Translations

In the same directory as preferences.txt, you will find a folder called language

It contains sub-directories for each language currently supported by the game.

• preferences.txt
• language
  • french
    • original.csv
  • german
    • original.csv
  • spanish
    • original.csv

You will see that in each language directory there is a file called original.csv . These are the original translations bundled with the game.

DO NOT EDIT original.csv, because the game will overwrite them at every start.

Instead start a new file called language.csv

You can copy just the lines that you want to change from original.csv into language.csv, or you can copy all the whole contents of original.csv.

Format of language.csv

Language.csv is a Comma-Separated-Value text file in UTF-8 encoding. It must start with a header row which indicates columns for state, key, svn, english, translation.

state: NEW, MODIFIED, PREVIOUS, CURRENT, OBSOLETE

• NEW, it means that the string was recently added to the game and there is no translation for it yet.
• MODIFIED means that the English string was changed since the last time it was translated and maybe the translation needs to be updated too.
• PREVIOUS indicates the previous translation (or translations). These are typically for reference, and you should supply a translation for the MODIFIED key instead.
• CURRENT indicates the current translation for a particular string.
• OBSOLETE indicates old translations. These have been superceded by new translations. They are for reference only and should typically not be changed.