Shelter v49.9 - Community Translation Tools (Patreon)

An extra video tutorial: https://youtu.be/D9IpUmW8MVgAwoo!

Build v49.9 of Shelter will be up for you all on Friday! And, among many other things, it contains new tools that I hope will help us grow the variety and quality of extra language translations in the game!

We already have a well-taken-care-of translation of Chinese, continuously maintained by Koshiro, and he's doing such an amazing job <3I don't have a Koshiro for any other language, though, so I came up with a process that I hope will make it possible to grow our language choice wider in variety and better in quality over time. Not as a one-man job, but as our shared community effort, for everyone who would like to contribute.In the language selection options of v49.9, you get Portuguese and Russian now. They are software translations based on as much of mine and native speakers' clarification input as we could get. Russian language was already covered up to the end of Burry's route by Torronzo and CountPhoenix, so the new files in Russian start at Rune, but I don't think they cover Max's yet.

Each language is filled with its own unique nuance, and that's why pure machine translations suck. Especially in prose filled with English puns, made-up fantasy words, knots, and dogness in every sentence. That's why it's absolutely necessary to correct and clarify things, so the machine can get it correct next time, and it can apply the same information to the translation already done.

We tried that with Portuguese, and the result is surprisingly good! Translation is generated; the software spits out questions for clarification, and it gets better and fixes mistranslations when it gets the answers. Sleth is a native BR-Portuguese speaker, so he helped me with it, and that's why this first iteration of Portuguese translation is already at a pretty good level! Check it out if you speak Portuguese.However, I don't have a boyfriend native in any other of our target languages yet, so I made the tools to help the players help us, if anyone wishes to. And also tools to make it easier to report any weird bits of translation, so we can apply the fixes in bulk much more easily.

So, how it works…

In Preferences menu, when you choose one of the in-progress languages (currently Russian and Portuguese), you'll get an option of "Help with Translation" underneath, with a small exclamation mark icon that you can click to get slides with all of the information on the process. The "Help with Translation" setting is Off by default, so turn it on to get access to the tools.

It shows only on desktop. It would be pretty annoying to write notes and share files from mobile.

The first thing you'll notice is that the dialogue box now shows both your chosen language and the original English, side-by-side. Super helpful for translation and, on an unrelated note, it's also the kind of tool I always wanted in games when I was learning languages lol. Right now I have it limited only for our translation work, but I can easily make it set for any combination of two languages in Shelter, if people would like an option for that.

In the screenshot above, you see a giant questionnaire box. It appears on lines that have language questions/topics we need specific input on. It shows you the explanation of the problem, and a set of choices that you can click for a quick response if one of them seems correct to you. If not, you can write your own translation in an input box underneath, and there's also an input box for any of your notes and explanations. I hope this will make for a tool that's convenient on simple topics (just click the correct option, and OK), but also allows you to give a nice custom response to more ambiguous problems (custom translation box + notes). All of your responses and notes are saved in a txt file you can share with me later!

On the right side of the screen, you have EDIT button with a number. The number shows how many questions you've passed without answering (because you can totally click past any question, no problem), so you can remember to return to them later if you like. The EDIT button, on the other hand…

The EDIT button is what you can use at literally any line to suggest your version of the translation for it, even if it's not something included in the questionnaire popups. Just put your translation, optionally a comment with explanation, and save.

On the bottom, you can check and edit all of the questionnaire popups for the current story file in one neat list. There's also a list of all your other translations and notes to browse, edit, or delete. At the very bottom of the EDIT screen, you can put your username in YOUR NAME field, if you like. That way I can track what feedback was from you.

Click SEND in the bottom right corner of EDIT screen to share your feedbark and notes with us.

That's it! Sounds like a lot, but it's a pretty simple process once you actually get to it. And you don't have to do much. Since I'm sharing this project with all of you now, every little bit counts. Eventually, if enough people are interested, we are bound to collect enough out of those little pieces to put together into a good translation.Just like with all other translations in Shelter, I would favor input from native speakers. I think getting natural nuance in language is something that can't be easily achieved without living and breathing it every day, and that's very important.

If you'd really like to help with another language, let me know, and we can talk about setting it up too. If we managed to get this process rolling with Portuguese and Russian, I would like to extend it to Spanish, Japanese, and possibly other languages if we find enough interest.And that's the whole thing! I hope it can work! At the very least, it's gonna be a fun experiment~Build v49.9 will be up for you on Friday!

Awoo!

Your Dog,Raus Vuffski