Magnus Posted February 8, 2000 Share Posted February 8, 2000 Hi, I'm willing to provide french translations to various CM-related articles or to parts of the manual. I've reported my willingness to Fionn : he thinks it is interesting but doubt it would be worth the time. So I'd like to know if there are many french speaking ones around here and if they would be interested by such things. Actually main question is to know if providing french translation would assure better coverage of CM in French speaking countries. That is to say, increase game pleasure, or, even better, bring new players to CM. I know many French are desperately seeking french versions of games ! Regards, Magnus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnus Posted February 8, 2000 Author Share Posted February 8, 2000 oupsssss, double post... Sorry for this inconvenience ! Please erase this topic BTS, and sorry again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xavier Posted February 9, 2000 Share Posted February 9, 2000 Hello Magnus, I think your idea is very good.I personally have some friends who are very interested by CM but they don't speak english at all. So it isn't easy for them to understand all they need to understand. I give them a lot of explanations but it is not enough. I would like to make a site in french for CM. I have already a lot of personnal stuff especilally on the normandy campaign(schemes, reports of local inhabitants, genuine french map of the area...) But I think I won't have the time to do it before the summer . But If you need some free help for anything, please ask me. I think my understanding of english and WWII is good enough to make some translations by instance... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Posted February 9, 2000 Share Posted February 9, 2000 That's a really good idea! I have a very limited knowledge of French and German but I still think that would be beneficial to everyone playing CM. The more people that buy it the more money BTS gets and the better CM2 is. ------------------ Visit my webpage! http://cm4mac.tripod.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Babra Posted February 9, 2000 Share Posted February 9, 2000 Maybe BTS will put up a webpage with the manuals in different languages? I know for a fact that there are more games that I would spend money on if I could read the manual first. Every board game I ever bought (and there were plenty) happened after I cajoled the vendor into letting me view the rule book first. ------------------ Floreat Jerboa ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
howardb Posted February 9, 2000 Share Posted February 9, 2000 Posting the manuals on the official site would be greatly appreciated by all the united Pirates of the world Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Babra Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 Good point ------------------ Floreat Jerboa ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Borgiax Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 I'm French and I would be glad to help translate some parts of CM. I have a good English so it shouldn't be too difficult. ------------------ Obersturmfuhrer Borgiax Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fionn Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 So that's Magnus, Xavier and Borgiax right? See Magnus, I'm not sure that: a) there's the demand and there's enough people to translate. Do some lobbying on some french newsgroups or something though and you could probably get 5 or 6 more committed translators. See if you can get anyone else and get back to me on Valentine's Day (Monday) ( note to self... get lots of flowers to make it up with my husband-deprived wife.. ALL my quality time is spent with my new mistress CM instead of the old bag.. umm I mean loyal wife ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tss Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 I'd like to warn you that translating a large text (like a manual) is probably much more work than you think it is. I once spoke with a girl who was studying to be a professional translator. Her estimate was that a professional translator can produce 3-4 pages of text a day. I don't know how large the manual will be, but even if the manual is only 50 pages it will take over 2 weeks if done full-time. The above figure assumes that the job is done well and by lowering the quality the process can be made shorter. However, in my opinion that is a very poor tradeoff. I personally stopped buying translated computer books after the publishers started to employ computer science students as translators. The translators probably know both the subject and the language reasonably well, but the results are still horrible with awkward sentences and numerous small (and in some cases large) errors. In any case, I'm not claiming that you couldn't produce a good translation that CM deserves, only that it probably takes a lot more work than you think. - Tommi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xavier Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 Oups! How big will be the manual for CM ??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fionn Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 Well I don't think translating the manual for CM is a realistic proposal. I DO think that translating articles of interest from CMHQ might be realistic though. FWIW even if they DID translate the manual I wouldn't post it on CMHQ and would frown and remove the links to ANY site which hosted the manual since it would be such a gift to pirates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnus Posted February 10, 2000 Author Share Posted February 10, 2000 Heya all, Maybe I should clarify here : <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>(... ) french translations to various CM-related articles or to parts of the manual <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I had never thought about translating the whole manual because : * It would take me a year of work and that's enough a reason * It would never be printed for obvious reasons so it would have to be posted online, and we all know it would be foolish. I just wanted to translate the core, that is to say the pages about game basis. And, even in this case, I was waiting for BTS to decide if it was legal/profitable or not. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> In any case, I'm not claiming that you couldn't produce a good translation that CM deserves, only that it probably takes a lot more work than you think <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Thanks for warning me Tss, but I DO know that translating is really time-consuming, especially if you want to make things right. About the CMHQ articles, I still think it would be interesting, and I see I wouldn't be the only translator available. So, in my mind, it is a perfectly possible project. Fionn, I'm looking forward to do some lobbying because I am myself not sure if the demand would justify our work ; I'd be glad to have some support from Cyberstratege so if Joel is lurking somewhere on the board.... I think this magazine, who get a good audience, may do a lot to CM in France ( and Belgium etc... ) Xavier, Your idea about a French CM site is really interesting. What about you Email me in private so that we can discuss it ? ( Borgiax, you're in too ) My only aim is to help CM have a larger diffusion ; as a French it was logical for me to propose these tranlations. Regards, Magnus ( IRL Olivier ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AfrikaKorps Posted February 11, 2000 Share Posted February 11, 2000 Your call. If you want to pass beside some buyers. It's a business choice. But it could meen more sell to have a french version and a spanish one. Of course it takes time to make, but its not like reshaping the english manual. The game wont change. How many time it took for the english one? Count half the time for each translations. IF CM sells good you can have a lot more revenues from that translation. And you have to do it once. I am french and i could tell you that a lot of my friends and familly dont buys english software. So if you are sure to sell good with CM you better make translations. Even if you have to pay for it. We are not talking about a poetic book, but a technical one. It just take a ww2 french speaking one to make a good translation. No need to turn into a Beaudelair proses. If you dont care. Other will also dont care about buying it. Thats pretty simple. They wont follow course to learn english. If you dont beleive that you will sell many games, why bother making it. I can say thats a good game and i know for one that my brother and a freind at work will buy it if they can understant it. So count already 2 sells. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fionn Posted February 11, 2000 Share Posted February 11, 2000 AfrikaKorps, I only help run a CM website/test CM. I'm not going to make a penny from CM. I jsut run the site cause I like the game. Go talk to Steve etc if you want to convince them to localise to French. Ps. I'm Flemish so don't get me started on the Walloons or French Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AfrikaKorps Posted February 12, 2000 Share Posted February 12, 2000 My post was not pointed at you Fionn. I hope BTS read all the topics. I just trying to help them. For me even if the game is in Russian i will buy it and get a French-Russian dictionnary. But i know a lot of people who wont. Maybe i just want to act like mother Theresa by helping them makes more money... Or simply have more people to play with and curses them in french.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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