Making the community more accessible to non-english-speakers

[Tommy]

As posted in https://minesweepergame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&p=1651#p1652:

I understand that the language barrier is a real problem, and that it is great to have a chinese site for all the people that don't speak english. Unfortunately, when I created scoreganizer, I was in a hurry, so I didn't think of translation - so, in order to translate it to chinese, I'd have to do some programming work first. But that is definitely something that I want to do as soon as I have time.

I also don't know how easy it would be to translate minesweeper.info (at least the menus and rankings) - Damien should be able to give more info here.

But it would be great if we could be more friendly to people who don't speak English in general. I'll start a thread about that now.

The Problem:

Most pages in this community are only in English (minesweeper.info (except for parts of the wiki), scoreganizer). Those that aren't are (mostly) pages for local communities (saolei.wang, minesweeper.ru). Between those four examples, we probably have 90% of the community covered, if not even more.

The world ranking on ms.info? Only English.

The page where world championships (as well as quite a few smaller tournaments) are hosted, ie, scoreganizer? Only English.

You will notice that I am mentioning my own page a lot - that it because I realize that it is part of the problem, and because I want to make sure that everyone understands that I am also very involved in this, despite the fact that I grew up with English.

Also, I don't want to criticize anyone in particular - I just want people to be aware that this is actually a fairly serious problem for an international community to have.

I would like to make this a community effort - the technical groundwork for translation is only half the battle. We need volunteers that speak the respective languages to do the actual translation work.

gacord, you posted this in https://minesweepergame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=179#p1389 a couple of months ago:

Huge number of players using clone 0.97 are suffering of the bugs.
Bug always happen when you breaks your record! It is really terrible.We call the bug as "Mao zhang wen's gift"
Both arbiter and Vienna sweeper is capable on chinese system. We are going weekly tournaments on scoreganizer.
It is my pleasure to make translations of scoreganizer!

Is that offer still valid? That would really motivate me to make scoreganizer ready for translation, and probably other sweepers to contribute translations as well.

Also, last but not least: As I have already mentioned, quite a bit of work has already been done on the wiki. And that is awesome! I hope that this thread will motivate people to contribute more languages - notably, but not only, chinese.

Doing this would enable us to grow together as a community and share tools like clones or scoreganizer better.

And: As a concrete example of the harm done by language barriers, consider the one between the english-speaking and chinese communities. saolei.wang is only compatible with clone 0.97, and Zhang Shen Jia is not maintaining it anymore; Meaning that chinese sweepers have to choose between a modern clone and their own community, and meaning that clone 0.97 is still legal there despite having known exploitable bugs.

So.

Enough of the talking.

Who wants to do what?

• Scoreganizer translation (server) - Tommy (!), gacord (chinese)(?), Tommy (german), ???
• Scoreganizer translation (client) - Tommy (!), gacord (chinese)(?), Tommy (german), ???
• Authoritative Minesweeper (page) translation - damien (??!), Tommy (german), ???
• Authoritative Minesweeper (wiki) translation - Damien (!*), [name removed](german)(?), ???
• Arbiter translation - Tommy (german), ???
• Vsweep translation - Tommy (!), Tommy (german), ???
• MSX translation - Curtis (??!), Tommy (german), ???
• Clone translation - Rodrigo (??!), Tommy (german), ???

requires technical changes before it can be translated
(?) unconfirmed, but has done so in the past/offered to do so)
(??) unconfirmed
(!) requires that person in order to be done
(*) for new languages
??? YOU!!!

As you can see, even if you aren't a programmer, there are things that could already be done!

Anyone with permission to edit this post is free to do so as volunteers reply. Also, the todo list up there is probably incomplete - feel free to suggest other places where translations would make sense! And to add them to my post as stated above.

[babz]

That's a good idea, but a lot of work!!

I could help to make the french translation, but i don't want to make promise that i wouldn't hold. i could start ith arbiter translation, and see after if i'm still motivated to continue with msinfo and scoreganizer.

Translate all the wiki is a really huge work, and i'm not sure i would even try.

[thefinerminer]

I will do almost anything if it helps more people know about minesweeper. If anyone has ideas or wants to help with this project (translating websites or programs) please tell us!

For the Wiki there is a German version ([name removed]), Spanish (Edu), Russian (Arsen) and Portuguese (Dayan, Lucas, Goncalo, Tertuliano) but most of these are a very early stage of translation - and it is a lot of work if only 1 person does the translation. I am happy to install copies for other languages, it only takes a few hours to set up and give user permissions to some users. (Or maybe you want to help with these languages). Translation does not have to be a perfect copy - as long as you are an experienced player you will be able to paraphase into your own language.

Arbiter has a very easy to translate language file (take the english.lng file and change the words and rename to mylanguage.lng). Instructions how to translate are in the file.

For ms.info there are 2 main options:

1) Have a copy of the site in each language, something like info/ru/ or ms.info/saper/ (for example the wiki is info/ru/wiki for Russian)
2) Have the site content saved as variables, and when the user chooses a language the value for that language appears. If variables are small (a paragraph) then people could translate 1 variable at a time. We could set up a system where paragraphs waiting to be translated are listed (in the /members area) and it would be possible to record who translated what and maybe thank them on their profile. If the master english copy is changed then an alert would tell the translator there has been a change etc... This means the entire site would be the same pages and links for any language. (Except the wikis). This can get complicated if there are any big changes to how the site is written or displayed.

[xiao01wei]

As well, if I have enough time, i am pleasure to translate all about minesweeper for chinese!

[gacord]

I'm ok to do the translation work for Chinese

[gacord]

Arbiter has a very easy to translate language file (take the english.lng file and change the words and rename to mylanguage.lng). Instructions how to translate are in the file.

True. And I've already done that.(Chinese.lng)

[qqwref]

I love this idea! I'd help out, but the only other language I know is French, and not nearly as well as a native speaker.

Just to lay out some groundwork, the biggest first steps on organization would be
- Make sure all official clones, websites, etc. are easy to convert into other languages. Arbiter is a great example here. Don't worry about Clone itself though.
- Figure out the most important languages to translate stuff into (I'm guessing: Chinese, Russian. any others?). Try to specifically find people for those languages first, with any other languages being a bonus.

It would also be really cool to have non-English sections on the forum... maybe someday we could convince all of our Chinese and Russian (and so on) friends to come post here.

[babz]

I almost finished with the translation of arbiter in french, few things left about new indicators.
But there are words that appears in arbiter we can't change because there are not in the language file.
Not really important though.

I can't the file, the extension is not supported, but if there is another french player or someone that wants to see if i made mistakes i can send him by PM or mail.

[Judith Sunrise]

I could translate to German, but I guess as there are Tommy and tons of German players, I won't be much of a help. Maybe in the Wiki?

[Judith Sunrise]

Searched in the German wiki for mistakes, found a lot of them (grammar, spelling, ...). How can I share my knowledge?

[thefinerminer]

Hi Judith, I registered you for the German wiki (info/de/wiki) so check your email


If anyone wants to translate Arbiter to another lanaguage, the topic is here: http://www.minesweepergame.com/forum/viewt ... f=26&t=243

[zhangshenjia]

And: As a concrete example of the harm done by language barriers, consider the one between the english-speaking and chinese communities. saolei.wang is only compatible with clone 0.97, and Zhang Shen Jia is not maintaining it anymore; Meaning that chinese sweepers have to choose between a modern clone and their own community, and meaning that clone 0.97 is still legal there despite having known exploitable bugs.

Just for update:

1. Saolei.wang has denied Clone 0.97 videos and start to accept Arbiter videos only since August 2013.
2. I'm developing a new version for Saolei.wang (test: new.saolei.wang), this site support i18n and I will release a English language version after I was done with basic functions.