Foreword

Firstly, thank you for your interest in localising Planetoid Pioneers!

This file should help you understand how to undergo providing translations for the game. If any instruction is unclear, please get in touch with someone from Data Realms before undergoing any translation - this will save wasted time and work!

File Setup

Each locale is represented with a json file. The list of locales to be loaded is included in the file index.json. You will need to add a new locale here for it to become present in the game.

Each locale filename is of the form XX.json, where XX is the 2 character ISO 639-1 id of the language. This is the same id used in index.json to specify the locale, and is used by the game to identify the locale as well, for saving the selected locale and swapping locales at runtime.

Each locale file contains an info section, and a translation section.

The info section contains an ID, an english name, and a localised name.

"info" : {
	"id": "en",
	"english_name": "English",
	"localised_name": "English"
}

• id is the ISO 639-1 id of the language (again).
• english_name is the english language version of the language name. This is to help developers see at a glance what the file contains if they are unfamiliar with the ISO 639-1 codes.
• localised_name is the own-language version of the language name. This is displayed in the menu to the user.

The translations section contains a map of english strings and locale-agnostic string IDs, to their localised content.

More information on the precise specification of these can be found below in the section Sourcing Translation Strings.

File Format and Encoding

Comments (both // and /* */ form) and trailing commas are allowed in the json files.

UTF8 encoding is used for all files.

Sourcing Translation Strings

en.json is the master list for translations. Other translations should be based on this file, and any new strings to be translated should be put here first.

Translators should add a translation for each entry found in en.json

If the english file has empty content for an entry, the translation should be based on the entry ID itself (ID is content).

If the english file does have content (for example, see the modal section), translation should be based on the english file content, as the entry ID is only an ID, and is not displayed to the user.

Any content {IN BRACKETS} should be preserved verbatim - it is used to position replacements. The replacements themselves may be localised separately, or may be something like a number or username. This allows each translation to be adapted to the native grammar without too much effort.

Note: this only applies to brackets in content - entry IDs as described above are also in brackets, but should not be preserved.

Language Difference Considerations

If you encounter trouble translating a certain phrase or formulation to your language, let us know. Changes can be made before to accomodate differences between languages - we can either provide a special ID, or rework how the string is formed altogether.

Representation Considerations

If you need to use quotations or line breaks within translations, these must be "escaped" with a backslash. Failure to do so will result in an error loading the locale file.

\" for quotes
\n for line breaks

HTML entities such as <, > and & must also be escaped or they will disrupt UI layout. They should be replaced with their html escaped form.

&lt; for <
&gt; for >
&amp; for &.

Avoid using any "creative" unicode space or layout characters, such as zero width spaces or similar.

Any other characters should work fine. If you encounter issues, please get in touch.