Finnish Translation

[Wild Penguin]

Hi,

I've started a Finnish translation. I'm not sure if it is a good idea, as some things are very difficult to translate (and, as a final result, may sound quite stupid). Also there's a few (weird) translation jokes in there currenty . It is in terrible shape in other ways too, since currently I'm the only contributor, and also quite unfinished.

I may see if I'll ever finish it, but contributions are wellcome. I wuold first like to see how the currently done translation fits in the game, to see if there's any oversights made by me in the way I'm translating - but there's no wasy way to test the translations yet. But that might change.

I believe a good place for any discussion about the translation would be here. But if I'm alone with this idea, this will be a monologue ;-)

Luulen että suomenkielinen keskustelu ei haittaa, kunhan se pysyy tämän ketjun sisällä ;-)

[kkmic]

Hello,

Welcome the the community!

Usually, people start asking questions first, and contribute later. You seem to do things the other way around (not that it would be a bad thing, mind you ).


Other translators encountered similar issues as you when attempting to translate the game, see here.

... as some things are very difficult to translate (and, as a final result, may sound quite stupid).

A quote from our project leader on this matter:

Sci-fi techno babble always sounds cooler in English.

[Mehukannu]

What point is this translation going? Would be nice to get some news if possible.

[Warboy1982]

https://www.getlocalization.com/openxcom/editor/15168/

[Wild Penguin]

Hi Mehukannu, and welcome!

I'd say that the translation is quite finished, as you can see 

However, it is mostly made by two users (myself and Esrael) as you can see: https://www.getlocalization.com/openxcom/stats/

So, to make the quality better, we need more finnish speakers to go trough the translations for validation and to make more proposals (in places where we may disagree) and to vote. I'm not saying that we've made bad work, but I think the more opinions we get the better the quality will be.

Also you can test the overall quality of the current translation quite easily from here (as the wiki says, updated hourly).

[Wild Penguin]

Hi,

I've been polishing the translation here and there where I've found something to polish =)

There's still a little nit to pick in the finnish translation which might require some coding for a properly polished fix - the dates.

In finnish, there is no 3-letter abbreviations for a month name (instead there is abbreviations missing the ending "kuu" or "kuuta", i.e.: tammi, helmi, maalis, huhti, touko, kesä, heinä, elo, syys, loka, marras, joulu). Even those abbreviations are NOT used in dates - but outside of date context only. For example, it would be OK to use them in a graph monthly columns. So, for example, for 1st of January the correct forms are "1.1." or "1. tammikuuta" (and there's a bunch of grammatically even longer possibilities. Here's some more in depth explanation (in finnish))

So, the abbreviations above could be used in the graph, but they won't fit (and there's no room to enlarge the text boxes there). The long month names (tammikuuta, helmikuuta, maaliskuuta) do not fit in the geoscape date window, and the short form seems awkward to me in finnish (and, is by no means correct).

So, I've concluded we should use the number for the month since that's the only form actually in use in finnish, and also in the graphs. But, it leaves a huge space between the day and month numbers currently (also, save game details have a space between month and date but it is much smaller in there i.e. just a space character). The easiest fix would be to make the justification / spaces right for the D.M. form.

For the "D. XXXXXkuuta" form, I believe there should be enough space in geoscape, but then the textbox for the date should be combined and justified as one string, instead of D and M separately (theres no problem in the save game details for 2. XXXXXkuuta form currently). EDIT: Scratch that. The longest month name is MARRASKUUTA. There no way that would fit, even if not written in capitals - I tried.

Just something to consider. I'm not sure it would be worth the effort to fix for 1.0 (a language specific adjustement of the text boxes would be needed, I think) - and also, there could be other languages that could require some polishing here - or maybe it's just Finnish that has difficult forms for dates 

Cheers!

[Wild Penguin]

Oh, also, there should be no space between "." and digits (i.e. it's D.M.YYYY, D.M. YYYY or D. M. YYYY are not correct). But there should be a space in the form "D. XXXXXkuuta YYYY".

[winterheart]

Well, this can be relatively easy to fix. There will need one more string for translation, I think this can be done after 1.0.

[Wild Penguin]

Thanks winterheart!

I agree, this is really just small cosmetics and can be done later. It might not be as straightforward as just translating the month names (even if done in both a short and a long form), however, but I believe still quite easy / trivial, if the requirements of different languages are known.

I wanted to tell about it here, since maybe there are other languages that don't have a way to display dates properly currently, too (that being said, if I'm not mistaken, the original date format in geoscape is not correct for either US or UK english???); hopefully devs find my message here, maybe I should have started a new thread to help in gathering the details for all languages .

For summary, the acceptable date formats in finnish are: "D.M.Y", "D.M." or "D. XXXXXXkuuta" (MARRASKUUTA is the longest month name). But the space will limit things, so for finnish, the choices are:

• in charts/graphs  the number of month (maybe followed by a dot): "M."
• in geoscape "D.M.", with the year on the next line
• in savegame details: "D.M.Y" or "D. Xxxxxxkuuta Y". I prefer the former, but it's a matter of taste really.

(Sometimes finnish month names truncated to the first three letters are seen in use, but that's just because of computers and bad localization. At least by my gut finnish language feel I find them utterly ugly, but they are understandable and some might not find them that ugly. Officially, they are an incorrect way of displaying the monts.)

Cheers!