There is a japanese version up the pipeline, if I remember correctly, once that is done they should have all the tools built into the game needed to localize it for other languages like chinese. Unfortunately dredmor includes an immense amount of written English so localization is going to be a lot of work (not to mention localizing the mods). Simple machine translation won't really cut it because of the use of puns, pop culture references and other content which cannot be translated and will need to be adapted.
If anyone can classify all the statements extracted, I can provide Chinese translation, I have experience of translation. Or give me a handy tool to modify the language. Ensure the quality of translation. I want Chinese players, including me, a better understanding of game content.
Despite my poor English, but translated from English into Chinese can guarantee quality. Some puns, pop culture references that I can be translated into Chinese players can understand.
I don't think there will ever be a properly translatable Dungeons of Dredmor. I wish there could be, but there are a lot of problems with doing it that aren't immediately obvious. There are a bunch of lesser issues, but 2 major issues. The first is that a large portion of the text for Dredmor is in C++, so we can't just edit the XML files and have it work. We'd need to spend a significant amount of time moving a lot of code that was not really designed for the level of sophistication that it now needs to support. The second and bigger issue is that the user interface is designed for very specific text sizes. Even if we could translate everything into fixed width fonts, we'd have to redesign the entire UI anyway because the existing font isn't, and many languages can't cleanly support fixed width in the first place. The best we can do is make sure that none of our future projects are restricted like this, and to let you know that CE should translate very well.
Is it possible an overlay of sorts can be used to translate known terms of the game in real time? Just like subtitles in a movie, if there was an overlay ability using a third party project, most of the important parts like the names of spells/abilities used could be translated to the known (insert language here) equivalent. Much of the game is effectively going to be (Monster A attacks Playername with Ability/spell for *# (Insert translated damage type and amount here.) Mods would be a feat to even begin to translate, but once a working overlay was in effect, even that could be simplified into expanding the translation dictionary to include the new words. It sounds like an ugly hack at best, but it could work. What do you think? (I know, even if you like the idea, it will have to wait until after CE is out and patched a bit.)
