Synthesia 2013 Roadmap

Archived development update discussion from past versions
Archived development updates.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Hmm, I've now learned that German and Russian are neck-and-neck for "usually is the longest version of any given text". To do this testing, I wrote a tool specifically to stress the UI by picking the longest text from all possible languages. That way I only have to test one "language" to see as bad as it can ever get.

In these screenshots it's almost always a German/Russian hybrid with little bits of the other languages sprinkled in here-and-there. This is a typical screen:
uiProblems.png
uiProblems.png (116.88 KiB) Viewed 15968 times
I just ran through every screen and it's not as bad as I thought it would be. Outside of one or two head-scratchers, I've identified 41 smallish things to fix, which I should be able to knock out tonight and have a preview in your hands tomorrow morning. We'll see.
kiwi
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 1180

Post by kiwi »

I have trad some games in french and yes ui is always a problem :)
Beetween the french part is not good traducted
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

I'm actually making good progress on these UI issues. More than halfway finished.

So hopefully you'll get a chance to evaluate the French translation yourself soon. (Everything I've looked up out of curiosity so far has turned out to be 100% correct. I'm really happy with the quality of what I've seen so far.)
kiwi
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 1180

Post by kiwi »

Yep what i have seen is not bad but not at 100%.
You have a translator or a real person?
eg: "bout de doight" is traducted "pièces of fingers" :)
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Hmm. I suppose it could go either way. The source English in that sentence is "finger hints". Their translation is just "fingertips" and yours seems like "finger parts". Interesting.

Otherwise, yes, real human translators. Actually, two of them per language. The service I used has a premium tier where a 2nd translator will review and refine things. Understanding the interface is vital, so I decided to go with that option. When I start to roll out multiple languages on the website, it will make sense to use the cheaper single-translator option for the bulk of it, but for the software itself, it seemed like it was worth it.
kiwi
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 1180

Post by kiwi »

Yes i was thinking "pièces/part fingers" (i wasn't sure about the word part )
The correct french for fingertips is "doighté"
serkol
Posts: 14

Post by serkol »

Nicholas wrote:Hmm, I've now learned that German and Russian are neck-and-neck for "usually is the longest version of any given text"....
Nicholas,

I make an iPhone app GymGoal. It comes in 6 languages. My native tongue is Russian, but I live in Canada, so I wrote the Russian and English texts. I order the rest to freelance translators.

I can share with you my experience regarding translations.

When the text does not fit, I send the screenshot to the translator, and ask him for a shorter version. For example, in your screenshot, it is possible to express the same meaning with less Russian words.

Sometimes, when a good short translation is impossible, I adjust the GUI for the specific language. For example, some buttons are taller for German and Russian, to fit 2 lines of text. Sometimes I hardcode this, sometimes the app calculates the rectangle for the given string before showing this string (iOS SDK support this), and adjusts the GUI based on this calculations. I almost forgot that you also have an iOS app :-) To give you more details, I do not use separate XIBs for each language. I've found this to bee too cumbersome for 6 languages.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

serkol wrote:When the text does not fit, I send the screenshot to the translator, and ask him for a shorter version.
I just wrapped up all the little fixes to make each language fit correctly. The only time I ran into an impossible-to-fit situation was in the stats box on the play screen. In rhythm practice when you're inside of a loop it shows "Most points:" at the top of the loop list. Apparently in Brazilian Portuguese those two short words turn into "O maior número de pontos". :lol:
serkol wrote:Sometimes, when a good short translation is impossible, I adjust the GUI for the specific language.
I'm actually really happy with how my little user interface framework handled all this. It has enough auto-scaling/auto-sizing flexibility built in that most of the fixes only took a minute or two. And I also can't use the XIB format if only because the same code (and language files) need to work outside the Mac/iOS ecosystem, so I understand having to create your own files.

Still, this has been a fun process. I'm pretty comfortable with it now. Adding more languages should be really easy from here on out.
PHIDIAS
Posts: 136

Post by PHIDIAS »

MY SUGGESTION IS TO PLAY MP3 IN SYNTHESIA
deed02392
Posts: 38

Post by deed02392 »

Nicholas, I'm still frequently returning for news about the in-app hand splitting functionality. Any updates?!?! :roll:
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Back in January I broke down the schedule, here. On that list, Free Play is finished and I'm working of the first (of about three) "quality of life" previews.

The last big status update was a couple weeks ago over here and I've made a lot of steady progress since then. While I've learned not to give time estimates anymore (that we're posting in the "2013 Roadmap" topic shows how bad I am at them), I can report that the task list is growing very short (7 items) before the next preview. Then it's only a couple more previews until hand-splitting happens.
Typhlosion
Posts: 82

Post by Typhlosion »

The German in your screenshot sounds really horrible, I hope that's not the final version :D
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Uh oh. That's the first time I've heard from someone with a bad report about the translations. If you grab the latest official version (Synthesia 9), the final translations are already in. If you wouldn't mind taking a look, I would appreciate any corrections you spotted. Thanks!
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