Translation
Well, it's not translation per se, it's writing whatever the FM translators decided an english phrase should be in a certain language. If you export a coach view in Swedish, everything within the exported file will be in Swedish, meaning that unless the FMScreener parser "understands" Swedish as the FM translators wrote it, it cannot properly parse it. To make sure that the parser can understand these phrases I had to come up with a way to first and foremost understand the phrases while coping with view related problems described in the next paragraphs.
The problems
«Coach View»
Within the exported RTF/HTML files the attributes gets sorted alphabetically by the phrases, so I could not hardcode the parser to look for "Level of Discipline" on line 27. After being sorted alphabetically in another language, the equivalent translated phrase could be on line 23 in one or on line 29 in another. There's really no way to tell unless the phrases are known and can be recognized.
Another issue with the Coach view is that the same phrase may appear twice in a language. Usually in separate categories, but sometimes even in the same category. An example of this is in the Swedish translation where the phrase Tränarutbildning appears twice in a row, but are actually two different phrases; Coaching Qualification and Coaching Course. With all this in mind I decided to rely on four different categories, which are laid out below, to help differentiate between the occurrences of the phrases.
«Coach Search View»
In this view there are actually not set rules apart from the requirements I have laid out. The order of the columns is entirely up to the user to decide, hence I cannot guess in which column an attribute may appear. The good thing about this view is that, to my knowledge, there are no phrases in the same language that are identical. It basically boils down to a sort of guessing game to tell one column apart from the others.
The solution
I decided to build a set of XML files to create a database of the phrases that the parser can use to tell which phrase is what. When I first noticed that the Coach view export was split up in four different categories I thought it was a great layout. I adopted this idea and named the four different categories:
- cpd: Coach Personal Data
- cta: Coach Training Attributes
- cma: Coach Mentral Attributes
- ctp: Coach Tactical Preference
It is the perfect method to distinguish one set of data from the rest, and it was a huge help when it came to solving the problem of multiple occurrences of one phrase. Therefore, the section build up for the XML files of the Coach view is laid out in four different categories, while the Coach search view only has one.
So how does it work?
Inside each section is a set of various phrases as they appear in the original English edition of Football Manager written in <source></source> tags. The translation of the phrases are inserted in the accompanying <target></target> tags. For example, in the Norwegian translation of a Coach view, the English phrase Level of Discipline in the Coach Mental Attributes category is translated to Disiplinnivå. To tell the parser that it needs to look for "Disiplinnivå" and link it with "Level of Discipline", I wrote this in the Norwegian translation XML for Coach views:
<unit>
<key>cma_levelofdiscipline</key>
<source>Level of Discipline</source>
<target>Disiplinnivå</target>
</unit>
Now by looking for "Disiplinnivå", the parser can detect that the phrase is the same as "Level of Discipline", and thus get the attribute for it.
As of right now, the following languages are supported:
English (UK)
English (US)
Norsk / Norwegian
Svensk / Swedish
Dansk / Danish
Italiano / Italian (Thanks to pauso!)
Portuguese / Português (Thanks to Tó_Madeira!)
Polski / Polish (Thanks to Marcin Prokopiak!)
Türkçe / Turkish (Thanks to Barış Özdağ!)
Český / Czech (Thanks to vikisko (FM Slovakia)!)
Français / French (Thanks to Marshall777!)
I need the following languages translated to support them:
Español / Spanish
Nederlands / Dutch
I would be very thankful if you would help me move more languages to the supported section. The process is actually not difficult nor time consuming. All you have to do is follow the steps below!
- Grab the translation XML skeleton files for
- Single coach view
- Coach search view
- Important! You must right-click the links and use "Save as..."
- Edit the file using a text editor, e.g. Notepad. Everything that is written between <source></source> tags must be translated exactly as it is written in FM in the accompanying <target></target> tags. For instance, "Man management" is translated in FM to Norwegian as "Sosiale ferdigheter", thus where it in the XML file says <source>Man Management</source>, I change the next line to look like this: <target>Sosiale ferdigheter</target> (English Example, Norwegian example)
- E-mail me the translated XML files preferrably along with sample exported RTF files and sample exported HTML files of the views you translated for me to run tests on
- Any contribution you make will be credited if you wish. Remember to include a name or nickname you would like me to credit the translation to