Community Translation - Development Log #475

Michi talks about the community translation team.

Michi (molp)

This morning I did some maintenance on the server cluster and while being at it, deployed a new badge I added last week: Everyone working on the community translation of Prosperous Universe received the Translator badge.

Here is how it looks in the BDGS command:

.. and in a USR profile:

I want to take the opportunity to talk a bit about the whole translation topic. When we started Prosperous Universe it was only available in English. Since we’re a Germany-based company, we had plans to translate the game to German (or other languages) in the back of our head, but didn't get around to actually do the translation. This changed when we received a fund from the German government. Its terms had the requirement that the game has to be available in German. So we got to work and prepared APEX for the translation into German. By setting up a translation process and the right tools, we made sure that other languages could be added more easily at a later point. After English, German became the second official language of Prosperous Universe.

Since we had good experiences with community translations in our other game AirlineSim, we decided to give it a try in Prosperous Universe as well. After mentioning it in one of the past devlogs and in Discord, we received a lot of feedback and the team of community translators quickly grew. Right now we have around 26 community translators.

Here is an overview of the languages the game is being translated into and the respective progress:

Click for a larger version

If you’re interested in helping the translation effort, you’re more than welcome. In case your language is not on the list: The current selection of languages is not set in stone, we can easily add another language.

Usually, I try to deploy the latest translations each Monday morning. This allows seeing the translation in its context rather quickly, without waiting for the deployment of an update or maintenance release.

Last but not least, the team wants to thank all community translators! You are doing a fantastic service to the game, thank you!

As always, we'd love to hear what you think: join us on Discord or the forums!

Happy trading!