Reconsider using google translate and community translations, please!#122

I love Tabletop Simulator, but using Google Translate is simply not a good way to localize games - machine TL cannot take context into account and will inevitably completely miss the mark on pretty much everything. Google translate is great for simple, generic sentences but will always fail when it needs to get more specific. Community translations aren’t a good idea either, since it’s disorganized and using the Workshop for it means there won’t be any kind of curation. Plus, if I might say, it sounds a bit like spec work - you wouldn’t put badly-made art in your game and then ask the community to make their own artwork, so why would you do that with localization?

I’ve looked at the French translation myself, and it’s honestly REALLY bad, with the settings menu being downright gibberish. In a sense, it makes it even harder to understand than if it was simply in English…

As a translation student, I know TONS of freelance translators would love to localize your game! Just reach out to them on social networks, ask for translators on Twitter or Facebook and you’ll definitely find people who are both fan of your game and able to do fantastic TL work. Sure, it might be costlier, and you probably won’t get as many translations as you do now… But it’s a shining example of quality over quantity.

On the language page, click Export and it will create a .CSV that you can edit and upload to the workshop for others to use. You say it’s disorganzied, but it can be as organized as you setup it to be, depending on the work you want to put it in.

See also https://tabletopsimulator.nolt.io/51

Thanks everyone for your feedback on this topic. I agree google translation are not great, but it’s the only way we are going to support 29 different languages at the launch of this feature. We will be working with the community to incorporate their translations into the base game so that the google translations will only be a temporary solution.

I’d say remove the google translations, also don’t rely on your community to do free labour for you. Support languages incrementally by paying translators. if you can’t afford 29 languages at the same time, add languages over time.

The translations are beyond not great, they are literal gibberish that nobody will be able to understand.

No translation will always be better than a bad translation.

Our thought process behind the google translations was if you can’t read english it’s better than nothing and it gives people translating a headstart on their work.

We have decided to remove the translation language support from the store page until we have a proper translation for a language.

The Danish google translation is so bad that it isn’t even a head start, everything would have to be rewritten for it to make sense. But it’s good that you’ve decided to take down the google translate translations.

I’d highly advise paying translators to translate the base game and DLC. I can understand paying translators to translate community content makes little sense and community voulenteer translation makes sense there.

But please actually pay translators to translate the content that you distribute yourselves (base game and official DLC).

Google Translate is really a mess..
From the German Translation
“Blocked” is translated to “bowel obstruction”
Pan in controls -> “skillet”
Tap -> Spigot
Raise -> Educate

and many more…

But thanks for the possibility to upload corrected versions :)

Thank you all for your feedback on our translation update. We chose to use google translate while providing tools for the community to create their own translation mods, as this is the only feasible solution to support 29 different languages. Due to our frequent updates and new features, translating additional texts in 29 different languages is not a viable option. The alternative, seen in many other games, is to only support the most popular languages. Instead, we added the ability for the community to create translations not only for their own mods but also the main game interface. There has already been great progress on translations in the workshop and we anticipate even more in the future. We plan on featuring the best translations from the community so they are easily discoverable in the future. We have updated the store page to accurately reflect that currently, English is the only properly supported language. Additionally, with today’s hotfix we have disabled the feature that automatically chose google translate and have set the game to default to English. Thank you everyone- we wouldn’t be here without our great community!

Oh, I tried to be as courteous about this as I possibly could but this is the last fucking straw.

Not only will you keep those awful excuses for translations in your game, you’re going to let your community do free labour for your sake instead of hiring competent, professional translators, with most of them working WAY below the minimum wage while TTS got you literal MILLIONS? And don’t give me the “we can’t do that because we’re constantly updating the game!!” bullshit, it’s easy to simply get in touch with them and ask them to translate new strings from time to time.
You’re afraid this might be hard to manage between twenty-nine different languages and translators, and might delay updates? Tough luck, and welcome to translation! There’s a reason why virtually no game, besides the biggest AAA titles, have support for every language.

You either are completely clueless or have no respect whatsoever for the work and craft of translators, and I’m seriously starting to think it’s the latter. So, as someone whose biggest passion, is translation I will kindly ask you to fuck right off.

@Knil: No. “This is the only feasible solution to support 29 different languages”? That’s false. You don’t have to do constant forward-facing updates, you have to start strong. That means you have to at least make sure you pay the appropriate money to get your BASE TEXT updated. Like, all text in the game that needs to be translated RIGHT NOW? That should all match. After doing appropriate text formatting for mass translation, I would bet you were able to do all relevant translations in 1 day. (Source: Coding knowledge. I’ve done this exact same thing before.) I understand constant updates place a strain, but put the correct first foot forward and FIND TRANSLATORS FOR YOUR BASE GAME EXPERIENCE.

“Tabletop Simulator now supports translation patches” would be more fundamentally honest marketing, Your game already exists in a dimension where you are constantly farming money off the fact other people use your content to connect and communicate.

Knil, your answers aren’t satisfying because they are failing to address the core issue: You haven’t actually offered any reasons you truly believe that the language packs that are unreadable Google Translate nonsense should be included in the game. If you’re going to ask for free labor from dedicated fans, just be fucking honest about it.

People will hate you for it, but they’ll hate you for it a lot less than they do this crap.

@Knil There is no need to support 29 different languages. At the very least, could you outsource Spanish, French, and German to real translators and use google translate for the rest? It was a vallient effort to make the game better, but it made the game worse. If you want to recover your image, please please listen to the fans. It really just sounds like you’re trying to exploit us.

Just dropping by to comment that after 3 years of debating the issue, the truth is that the current translation system in the game is deficient. I was willing to make a proper Spanish translation. I used Weblate and managed all the strings; I translated each one of them. However, during testing, I noticed that they use the same string in various contexts, and not all CSV strings are replaced in the game. Therefore, they should ensure to use different identifiers for each string instead of the string itself (as done, for example, in i18n packages and Minecraft mods) and test that all strings are replaceable. Even the tutorial cannot be fully translated; the last message remains in English even though the CSV contains the line that should change it. If they at least want the community to translate the game for free, they should provide them with good tools to do so, not an incomplete system that limits them.