Community Translation - Ukrainian Language Add-On

[Lilly Blanche]

Hi there everyone!

 

I've been lurking around here for some time, and while scouting the forums yesterday I've come across a pretty old topic started by some guy (or gal) regarding the Ukrainian language translation. Looks like he or she wanted to create a language add-on but had issues with the fonts. Nyerguds was ready to assist, but the user kinda vanished and never wrote anything back, which is unfortunate. Still, it just so happens that I'm well-versed in both English and Ukrainian, and I've got time to spare, but... eh... got no fonts either, and no idea how to make them myself, which is bad XD Fonts are my worst enemies, like spiders, they're so near, and yet so far, these little files that are always encoded in a way that escapes my understanding, urgh...

 

Ukrainian shares most letters with Russian, aside from some special characters - it's got these: " І і, Ї ї, Ґ ґ, Є є", and doesn't have these: "Ы ы, Ё ё, Э э, Ъ ъ". Everything else is exactly the same. So, in theory, making a Ukrainian font shouldn't be a lot of trouble, it's not like Japanese or Arabic where there's absolutely nothing to base it on and everything has to be made entirely from scratch. However, in order to do so, you've gotta be smart, and I'm not smart enough. Meaning, I only know about languages, and not font editing... or computers, for that matter. Terrible, I know! On the bright side - I know where the actual text is and how to get it out and put it back in, so there's that.

 

Anyhow, if anyone could help, I'd be much obliged! I promise, I won't disappear without a trace like that other person did, this translation WILL HAPPEN, unless I spontaneously combust. Or if nobody is able to help me here, which... is more likely to happen, but hey, always hopeful!

 

Done rambling,

Thanks for reading! ^^

[nariac]

Hi there everyone!

 

 

Hi!

 

Wish I was able to help you, but sadly my skills also lie with languages more than fonts. But I shall say this: Lurk less, post more! We need more active people in this place! Maybe make some missions for us to play.

[Lilly Blanche]

Yay! Thanks for the reply! Even though you can't help, I still appreciate you taking your time and saying something

 

Yeah, I will try to be much more active from now on. I used to make maps for Tiberian Sun back in the day (for personal use, mostly), but it's never too late to start, eh?

[nariac]

Yay! Thanks for the reply! Even though you can't help, I still appreciate you taking your time and saying something

 

Yeah, I will try to be much more active from now on. I used to make maps for Tiberian Sun back in the day (for personal use, mostly), but it's never too late to start, eh?

 

Oh, I'm impressed. I was never able to get the hang of using that editor. I make missions for Tiberian Dawn, so if you ever want some really retro fun, check them out.

[Nyerguds]

Hey,

Making a translation is mostly a matter of finding the right text encoding. The fonts themselves are no issue - I made a font editor for that a while ago, but I'd have to research which text encoding is generally used for Ukranian.

An easy way to do that is to get the font editor, open some font (any font, really) in it, go down to the characters after index 127. and then just change the text encodings dropdown at the bottom until you get all the characters you need in the "Char" column of the symbols list. (Note that I prefer using DOS encodings since everything else in C&C uses those, so check these first)

I've attached a font you can use to test (the font doesn't really matter; you don't need to look at the font data but at the characters corresponding with the encoding).

The font itself is meant for the encoding "DOS-850" in the dropdown, which is "Central European"; select that and you'll see all the characters line up. Could be that font contains everything you need, but I have no idea to be honest.

Do note this isn't the only font that needs to be adapted to make the translation - there are a couple more. But I'm not asking you to adapt the font; I'm just asking to look through the text encoding to find one that contains the characters you need. I can take care of most of the rest (well, for the fonts. Not the translation itself, obviously).

For your information, I got a full guide to translating C&C1:
http://nyerguds.arsaneus-design.com/cnc95upd/cc95p106/language/
I suggest you read through that; it'll tell you exactly what needs to be translated.

I haven't updated it since I made my font editor, though. I should really do that

[Lilly Blanche]

Thanks for the detailed answer!

 

Now, I'm not gonna pretend I understood everything you've told me to do, but... here goes.

I opened the font you've given me with the help of your font editor, scrolled down past the Dec 127 and changed the text encoding. The results were as follows:

KOI8-U 21866 Cyrillic has got every single symbol I need in the Char tab, might be the best option if possible.

 

DOS 850 Western European - has no symbols that can be used, as far as I can tell, all Latin.

 

DOS 852 Central European - same thing, nothing, all Latin.

 

DOS 866 Cyrillic - has all the required symbols in the Char field (aside from the symbol "Ґ ґ", which is something I can find a work around for, since this letter is rarely used).

 

According to the DOS 866 Cyrillic, the Dec numbers for the symbols required for me to translate everything are:

 

96 - '

 

73 - I

105 - i

 

242 - Є

243 - є

 

244 - Ї

245 - ї

 

+ all the Russian letters aside from the ones mentioned in my first post.

 

//UPDATE: I've just checked, and it seems like the generally accepted encoding for Ukrainian is KOI8-U. From Wiki: "KOI8-U is an 8-bit character encoding, designed to cover Ukrainian, which uses a Cyrillic alphabet. It is based on KOI8-R, which covers Russian and Bulgarian, but replaces eight graphic characters with four Ukrainian letters Ґ, Є, І, and Ї in both upper case and lower case.

 

In Microsoft Windows, KOI8-U is assigned the code page number 21866. In IBM, KOI8-U is assigned code page 1168."

[Nyerguds]

Well, KOI8-U is in the dropdown, so that shouldn't be much of a problem. Thanks for the research!

The dropdown lists all text encodings which are one-byte-per-character (8-bit, as the wiki said), and in which the normal 0-127 ASCII character range is preserved. Well, all those known by the .Net programming framework I used for the editor, that is. I basically just request the full listing and then filter a bit

I'll see if I can find the time to actually make the fonts in KOI8-U then. ...and I really ought to update that guide, too 

One small note: the font used for the "Mission accomplished" / "Mission failed" text is a special case; it's all caps, and it's got a bit of a colour fade in it that makes it hard to edit. So I won't be making a complete KOI8-U version of that. But if you absolutely do need special characters in these two phrases, I'd be willing to just make the few symbols that are needed.

[Plokite_Wolf]

I've attached a font you can use to test (the font doesn't really matter; you don't need to look at the font data but at the characters corresponding with the encoding).

Is that the one you made when I was doing my now-lost Croatian localization?  :O

[Nyerguds]

Possibly. I don't think it was ever finished :-\

 

I never lose anything though. It's all still on my disk. so if you want to finish it, we can work on that

[Plokite_Wolf]

Possibly. I don't think it was ever finished :-\

Neither was my project, which makes me sad still. Welp, guess I could dive into your new font editor...

[Lilly Blanche]

Thanks a lot, Nyerguds!

 

There's absolutely no rush with this, whenever you have the time, I'm willing to wait for as long as might be needed!

And as for the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED / MISSION FAILED - I'll just write "ЗАВДАННЯ ВИКОНАНЕ", "ЗАВДАННЯ ПРОВАЛЕНЕ" or something along those lines, none of which require any additional special characters, and voila - no need to deal with that font.

 

Thank you once again!

[Nyerguds]

Um... the "mission accomplished" font only contains the numbers 0-9 and the uppercase basic A-Z alphabet. So a lot of those would indeed need to be added. I can fake some of these, but there's definitely no Д, Л or П in there

You really don't need to wait for the fonts, though. You can go ahead and translate the text files. As the guide mentions, there's also some additional text needed, for things that are in the game as graphics, like the sell / repair / map buttons, and the "primary" text on buildings.

One of the hardest parts will probably be the unit icons. I have a lot of experience with editing icons, but for long names, in foreign languages, I have no idea how these names can be abbreviated to fit on the icons.

[Lilly Blanche]

Hold on, I've got a solution for that font issue!

I'll write "MICIЮ BUKOHAHO" and "MICIЮ HE BUKOHAHO". This way, the ONLY symbol that'll need to be added is the letter Ю , which is basically just a stick attached to a circle XD Everything else - MICI and BUKOHAHO - already exists in the Latin font and looks more or less acceptable.

 

Roger that. I will start translating the files! Is there anything else I should know, any special instructions as to how to do it? I've read that before translating the main text file, one has to convert it to a corresponding encoding with something like EditPad Pro. In my case, do I have to convert it to KOI8-U using that tool prior to editing?

 

Yes, I'm aware of that. I will do my best to translate those things in a way that fits the icons easily, which might prove to be rather tricky, but hey, that's the fun part anyway

[Nyerguds]

Well, some of files need some post-processing, but I can take care of that. The line break character in the main strings file is replaced by the `, so that needs to be preserved. But that's all explained in the guide too.

[Lilly Blanche]

Understood, I'm halfway through the main text_xxx file at the moment!

[nariac]

Understood, I'm halfway through the main text_xxx file at the moment!

 

Oh, quick progress.

[Lilly Blanche]

Doing my best here

 

So far, things that are very time consuming are the fairly numerous African proper names (can never be sure it's spelled or pronounced the same, gotta double check every single one of those), the in-jokes manifested as different house names (gotta be sure what the developers were going for here) and the stuff connected with modems. I'm fairly certain nobody's gonna ever be using that type of connection nowadays anyway, but can't leave anything untouched.

 

Also, unit names. English loves abbreviations, Ukrainian - not so much. This results in either extremely long names, or unnatural abbreviations. For example, "SSM launcher" - I either have to write "Комплекс ракет системи Поверхня-Поверхня" ("Kompleks raket systemy Poverchnia-Poverchnia", which is just ludicrous XD), or "Комплекс РПП" ("Kompleks RPP"), which is never used in Ukrainian. But it will be from now on, because this is the most sane option out there XD

 

Still, it's a lot of fun.

[Lilly Blanche]

Status update:

 

The main text file "text_xxx" has been translated in its entirety. As for the text file with all the briefings, the ones related to the main game are done as well. Now I'm going to start working on all the additional briefings. Obviously, there will be some editing once I'm able to put everything in the game and test it out, there are some things I'm still on the fence about, but the only way to make sure it's correct is to shove it in there and play it. I've also managed to find a team of voice actors willing to record the unit and EVA voices in Ukrainian (YAY! ). We might even go as far as to translate and dub the cutscenes, but only after the initial full text and unit / EVA translation is done and released.

 

All in all, doing great so far, if anyone's interested

[nariac]

Status update:

 

The main text file "text_xxx" has been translated in its entirety. As for the text file with all the briefings, the ones related to the main game are done as well. Now I'm going to start working on all the additional briefings. Obviously, there will be some editing once I'm able to put everything in the game and test it out, there are some things I'm still on the fence about, but the only way to make sure it's correct is to shove it in there and play it. I've also managed to find a team of voice actors willing to record the unit and EVA voices in Ukrainian (YAY! ). We might even go as far as to translate and dub the cutscenes, but only after the initial full text and unit / EVA translation is done and released.

 

All in all, doing great so far, if anyone's interested

 

Wow, that's a lot of good work. Well done.

[Lilly Blanche]

Thank you!

 

You know, I never realized how much cool stuff is in this game, going through all the files kinda opens your eyes. All those countries featured in the main campaign, information about their capitals, government types, actual maps and borders. I also love the fact that a lot of this game takes place in Europe, and there's even a mission set in Ukraine, which is awesome. Though the actual maps don't differ much when it comes to art, and "Estonia" and "Ukraine" kinda look the same, so unless you've paid attention prior to playing, you'd never be able to tell which is which, it's still a nice touch that adds a lot of immersion for those willing to read. And all the hidden things! One of the random houses is named after the first Solomonic Emperor of Ethiopia. It shows that Westwood really cared, and it makes the translation process a very fascinating experience. I actually learn a lot myself, believe it or not. Once this is done, I'm 100% doing Tiberian Sun

[Lilly Blanche]

UPDATE:

 

All the briefings have been translated! Dinosaurs, yay!

Changed the name of the main topic to better reflect what exactly is going on here.

 

What's left to do as far as text goes:

Unit icons + additional graphics.

 

The main portion of the translation is done. Not sure how to do the icons, since according to the instructions provided, one has to take the letters from the included image file, then copy and paste them in order to make words. However, there are no Cyrillic letters there, so... can't really do that. I assume I can't just use a text tool to write with my own font there. The project will be continued as soon as I get the fonts to test the translated material. In the meantime, I'll focus on the audio aspect of it.

[Nyerguds]

Hehe, nice work! I'll see if I can take care of the fonts this weekend. As for the fonts used on the icons and buttons, yes, they'd need adapted Cyrillic versions too, though I think the stuff on the sell/repair/map buttons is identical to the grad12 font.

I've been considering making the icons text into a font file as well; it would make it easier to make text out of them, using the preview window of the font editor. And it'll also make it easier to add special characters to them, of course.

I can take care of the buttons and other various graphics text if you give me the strings to put on them. Overall, the other files you have will probably need some post-processing, if only to convert them to the KOI8-U encoding (unless you know how to do that; I use a tool called Editpad Pro that can do text encoding conversions). One other thing that'll probably be needed is converting the text ini to C&C strings file.

[Nyerguds]

I finished the 8fat font.  Lilly Blanche, if you can upload the text_xxx.ini file I can convert it to C&C Strings file format for you; the system to read it as ini is unfortunately not in any publicly released version of the 1.06 patch yet

[Lilly Blanche]

You're awesome! Thank you so much!

 

I've attached the main text file to this post. I used EditPad Pro while translating it, and I tried to change the encoding to KOI-8U and save it like that. Now, I'm not sure if my efforts were successful, but I tried.  Hope it works!

 

Also, could you be so kind as to clarify what you mean by "strings" when talking about images? Do you need the building / unit names themselves, or their string numbers as they appear in the main text file?

[Nyerguds]

Sorry, it's a programmer term. A "string" is a piece of text. The C&C strings file format (the .eng/ger/fre files in the original game) is the original format used to store the text that I gave in the text_XXX.ini file.

I finished all the fonts, and managed to reproduce the glow used on the VCR font, which means it should not be too hard to make new symbols on that font either.