If you want to submit (and maintain) a translation for openBVE, please read the following information.

In order to ensure a certain amount of quality, any translator needs to be proficient in understanding English, needs to be able to produce correct orthography and grammar in the target language, use punctuation correcty, and needs to be able to correct for any mistakes I might have made in those categories. Of course you should understand the terms you are translating, and thus, you need to have a basic understanding of openBVE.

Another important point is that the in-game translations should not add any additional information compared to the English original. If you are not satisfied with any of the expressions I have used, then simply tell me. This especially applies to the ATS/ATC lamps. As openBVE simulates some versions of ATS and ATC for compatibility reasons, you should not "translate" those terms into names of similar systems that are used in your territory, but keep these names, as those system are the ones that are simulated, not the ones in your territory. As the current English strings are mostly abbreviations, here is a list of what they actually refer to. You should base your translations upon these terms, but you should also understand what they refer to in-game:

Notes for ATS/ATC lamps:
If you have any further questions, just ask. Generally, as long as there is a maintainer of a particular translation, you should contact the translater to submit suggestions or corrections. If a maintainer has not updated a translation in a while, the maintainer will be marked as inactive in the following list. If the maintainer does not respond to calls and seems to have abandoned the translation, the language will be marked with Spot open. If you want to take over the translation in these cases, please contact me.

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Overview of available translations and their maintainers

• Čeština (Czech):
  gyzma (active)
  
  
• Deutsch (German):
  Jan (active)
  
  
• Español (Spanish):
  Spot open. Contact me if you want to take over this translation.
  
  
• Français (French):
  Laurent (active)
  
  
• Italiano (Italian):
  tof63 (active)
  
  
• 한국어 (Korean):
  HIDDEN-CATCH (active)
  
  
• Hungarian (Magyar):
  phontanka (active)
  
  
• Nederlands (Dutch):
  DJB (active)
  
  
• 日本語 (Japanese):
  megumu (active)
  
  
• Polski (Polish):
  piotrulos (active)
  
  
• Português (Brasil) (Portuguese, Brazil):
  Spot open. Contact me if you want to take over this translation.
  
  
• Português (Portugal) (Portuguese, Portugal):
  Ducatista (active)
  
  
• Русский (Russian):
  Spot open. Contact me if you want to take over this translation.
  
  
• 中文 (港澳繁體, 台灣正體) (Traditional Chinese, Hong Kong / Taiwan):
  UCR683, efilm (active)
  
  
• 中文 (大陆简体) (Simplified Chinese, Mainland):
  alvinwong (active)

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Please note that translations should always be send to me via email. You can find the address on the homepage, and also in my personal profile. When you update the translation, always change the date at the top of the language file so that I can keep track of when it was last updated.

Well... I'm interested to translate the app to Spanish . I will be stay tuned for news.

I`m interested to translate app to Polish language

I put myself in for the German translation of the game.

I've translated .cfg in italian except command names

@Sagman, piotrulos, Jan and johngwaldie:

You can give your translations a go now. Please take orthography, punctuation and grammar into account, and also my previous notes on the ATS lamps. If there are questions remaining on the meaning on some of the items in the language configuration file (Interface\language_xx.cfg), then ask. Please use a medium-polite language, meaning no slang, but also not too formal. All files must be handed in in Unicode. Once done, I will include the translations in the distribution, but will tag them as being not reviewed. If other people speaking the same language can confirm that the translations are ok, I will remove this tag. Please stay around for version 1.0 as there might still be additions and slight changes.

Also keep in mind that previous language files cannot (or should not) be reused as there are changes in some of the keywords. Use the English language file of the 0.9 distribution to make your translations and start afresh.

EDIT: Once done, please don't inline the language files on this forum as the files are simply too long. Use attachments or PM to exchange data.

I and my friends are now translating into Chinese Traditional (Hong Kong)
Due to political reasons, terms and words are different in Mainland China, Hong Kong + Macao (Macau), Taiwan.

Michelle,
Sorry for posting long Japanese translation in another thread.

Will you please accept me as Japanese cfg file translator?
I think I can contribute translation only for cfg file.
Translating whole web page is too much to me.

If you give me a permission, I will upload cfg file as an attachment for evaluation.

Megumu

Of course I will accept your translation. Once you are done, send me your file.

Michelle,

I sent PM to you with cfg file attached.

Megumu

I'm just doing the translation (still having to do all the controls descriptions and the keys) and I'm now having some comments and questions.
- Could you add an option to change the date and time format?
- in the [loading] section, the save, ignore and cancel texts have no effect in the program
- and finally the ATS lamps. I've used the German BVE 2.6 string.ini as a starting point, but for some indicators I'm not sure if the old translation was correct, so could you please give me a short explanation of the meaning of each indicator?

EDIT: In the cfg-File, in the [commands] section, the descriptions relating to the in-game menu and showing the vertex normals are also missing

Jan

Just a note for all others regarding the translation of the keys:

openBVE always thinks it is running with an American keyboard layout,
so use this picture to look up the key and see to which key it corresponds on your keyboard.
E.g. on a German keyboard the square brackets (to the right of P) correspond to Ü and +.

EDIT: I still don't know where and/or what these keys are:
Euro (my Euro key is Alt Gr + E); Left/Right Meta, Left/Right Application, Menu, Help and Power.
I guess some of those correspond to the Windows and the context menu keys, but I don't know which ones, and some of the keys might also be Mac specific.
Could somebody enlighten me on this (and give me a precise description of where that key is located)?

First thing: Sorry, there are in fact some items which I missed to include in the English language file. Additionally, I have found that the export feature to save the score log and the black box are not currently translatable at all. I will include support for these missing items with the next revision (0.9.0.1) within a few hours. I will also mention here which items in the language file are new by then.

Second thing: I originally wanted to add a keyboard grab feature (similar to the joystick one). However, I have noticed that SDL (which is used for keyboard and joystick interaction) does not receive keystrokes when Windows Forms is used (meaning a non-SDL window such as the main menu is currently open). Even though I have means to receive keystrokes in Windows Forms, the keycodes reported by Windows Forms are not the same as those of SDL. As such, I can currently only offer the combobox where you can select the keys manually. Apparently, SDL uses numbers referencing the location of the keys as present on the keyboard, not taking the current keyboard locale into account. I am not sure what is best to do. As long as the current combobox is used, I would suggest that you base your translations on the keyboard layout that is usually used by users of that particular language, e.g. translate the Z key as Y and vice versa for a German layout. However, please test the assignments in-game to make sure that there actually work this way.

Finally, the application key is the "Windows" key. However, as openBVE is not only targeting Windows, the more neutral name for the key used in English is the Application key. Please use a neutral name in other languages, too. The "context menu" key is named the Menu key. The Meta key, or diamond key occasionally, is not really used any longer. I suggest keeping the name of "meta" here. The Help key is, I think, an Apple-specific key. As for Power and Euro, maybe there are keyboards with dedicated keys. I don't know either for these ones.

Version 0.9.0.1 is out which adds a few things which could not previously be translated. For all translators, please download the new version which includes an updated language_en.cfg. In order to help you to find what has changed, these are the additions:

The [log] section has been added which includes strings for the two logs (score and black box).

Inside the [controls] [commands] section, the following strings have been added:
CAMERA_RESTRICTION
MENU_ACTIVATE
MENU_UP
MENU_DOWN
MENU_ENTER
MENU_BACK
DEBUG_NORMALS

Please include those strings in your translations.

Hello Michelle,

I can translate the .cfg file into french.

Best regards