Many no longer used strings still available in the translation interface
navazka
Join Date: 2015-12-08 Member: 209825Members
Join Date: 2015-12-08 Member: 209825Members
in Translation
The translation system contains many strings which are either obviously duplicated (triplicated, etc, with minor wording changes), or are very likely to be no longer used in the current version of the game.
Example of a duplicated string:
By grepping the ns2/lua directory, only TIPVIDEO_1_EXO_EXOSUIT_RAIL_GUNS exists, other strings do not. There are tens of duplicated strings out there similar to this example.
Example of an obviously outdated string:
Shadow step is no more and babblers now don't require research, unless I'm mistaken. None of the strings can be found in the ns2/lua directory.
The problem is that these strings waste time of the translators, who can hardly distinguish which strings are real and which are no longer being used, and therefore need to translate everything. That makes it take longer, makes translation process look a more daunting task (more strings to translate), and most importantly makes translation maintenance much harder (if you decide to change how a particular term is translated - and that happens a lot, at least in my language - you need to go through all available strings and modify them).
My current estimate is that 10-15% of available strings are these superfluous remnants of the past. Developers, could you please trim those, so that they get removed from the translation system? If it helps, I can provide an exact list, if grepping in lua files is sufficient.
This would definitely make the translation process easier. Thanks a lot.
(And if you actually made this not a one-time fix, but a future-proof fix, by automatically pruning old strings when uploading new data to the translation system, you'd earn an endless translators' gratitude
).
Example of a duplicated string:
TIPVIDEO_1_EXO_EXOSUIT_RAIL_GUNS (Hold Right-Click to charge the Rail Gun. The shot can pierce targets.) TIPVIDEO_1_EXO_RAIL_GUNS (Hold Right-Click to charge the Rail Gun, the shot can pierce targets.) TIPVIDEO_1_EXOSUIT_RAIL_GUN (Hold Right-Click to charge the Rail Gun, the shot can perice targets.)
By grepping the ns2/lua directory, only TIPVIDEO_1_EXO_EXOSUIT_RAIL_GUNS exists, other strings do not. There are tens of duplicated strings out there similar to this example.
Example of an obviously outdated string:
EVT_SHADOWSTEP_RESEARCHED (SHADOWSTEP RESEARCHED) TIPVIDEO_2_FADE_FADE_SHADOW_STEP (Press Shift to Shadow Step. You can use it with a direction key to dodge quickly.) EVT_BABBLERS_RESEARCHED (BABBLERS RESEARCHED)
Shadow step is no more and babblers now don't require research, unless I'm mistaken. None of the strings can be found in the ns2/lua directory.
The problem is that these strings waste time of the translators, who can hardly distinguish which strings are real and which are no longer being used, and therefore need to translate everything. That makes it take longer, makes translation process look a more daunting task (more strings to translate), and most importantly makes translation maintenance much harder (if you decide to change how a particular term is translated - and that happens a lot, at least in my language - you need to go through all available strings and modify them).
My current estimate is that 10-15% of available strings are these superfluous remnants of the past. Developers, could you please trim those, so that they get removed from the translation system? If it helps, I can provide an exact list, if grepping in lua files is sufficient.
This would definitely make the translation process easier. Thanks a lot.
(And if you actually made this not a one-time fix, but a future-proof fix, by automatically pruning old strings when uploading new data to the translation system, you'd earn an endless translators' gratitude
).
Comments
I love this guy
Here are the scripts. Only executable on Linux and probably Mac, but now that bash is available on Windows 10 (second link), you can probably run it from Windows as well. To be executed from Steam/SteamApps/common/Natural Selection 2/ns2/gamestrings directory.
Total number to translatable strings:
The print_missing.sh script:
#!/bin/bash set -e while IFS='' read -r line; do keyword=$(echo "$line" | cut -d' ' -f1) if ! grep -q -r "[\"\']$keyword[\"\']" ../lua; then echo "$keyword" fi done < "enUS.txt"Total number of translatable strings which are not found in the lua directory: (If you want to print their names instead of counting them, just remove | wc -l part.)
Edit: updated to include quotes/apostrophes around searched strings.
Are you gaiz seeing this? @remi @GhoulofGSG9 @McGlaspie
Quick, give him a bomb to defuse before he finds more things wrong with NS2!
Sorry, I make my living as a software QA, I think it left a mark on me ;-)
Anything else you can dig up mate? lol
As much as i hate to say it but we sadly currently don't have the time or resources to work on the translation website.
Even though we are all aware of all the annoying issues the currently used website has. Otherwise i guess we would move ns2 to the newer translation website of UWE that is used for Subnautica.
Great! It's fewer than I counted, but maybe I was wrong about some of them. Definitely appreciated, thanks.