Translation question

RedRoboRedRobo Member, PRO Posts: 680
edited April 2017 in Working with GS (Mac)

Does anyone know of a way/process/procedure to export a table of words (about 2000) from GameSalad, translate into another language and re-import? Each cell has a single word.

The translator within Excel does not translate cells with a single word in them :(

Comments

  • jamie_cjamie_c ImagineLabs.rocks Member, PRO Posts: 5,772

    I always suggest paying a real living person to do translation. We have all seen copy that is written by 'automatic' translation and you can always tell it's not quite right.

  • SocksSocks London, UK.Member Posts: 12,822

    I can translate into English*


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    *from English.

  • SocksSocks London, UK.Member Posts: 12,822
    edited April 2017

    @jamie_c said:
    I always suggest paying a real living person to do translation. We have all seen copy that is written by 'automatic' translation and you can always tell it's not quite right.

    I yes agree and some time it never looked really right all at the time more looked bad or other wise.

  • jamie_cjamie_c ImagineLabs.rocks Member, PRO Posts: 5,772

    I agree and yes, some time it never looked really right all the time.

    lol, exactly!

  • MelodyCatsMelodyCats Member, PRO Posts: 128

    Forget the Turing test - imho the day machines spit back perfect translations of all kinds of text is the day singularity has truly arrived... And time to run for the hills:)

  • pHghostpHghost London, UKMember Posts: 2,342

    Probably the easiest way is to use Google Translate.

    Export your table to CSV. Open up in a text editor. That gives you the words separated by commas. Copy/Paste to GT. Take the result, translated words separated by commas. Paste into CSV. Import CSV to Excel.

    As mentioned, translations like this can be sketchy. Of course, if you just need the words themselves and aren't building sentences from them, it's probably OK.

  • PhilipCCPhilipCC Encounter Bay, South AustraliaMember Posts: 1,390
    edited April 2017

    @Socks said:
    I can translate into English*
    ... from English.

    Yeah, so can I. :p

    But here's a point to make to some of non-native English speaking colleagues:

    I'd be quite happy to proof read your description copy before you submit it to iTunes Connect for the App Store, for free, just to check there is nothing awkward or grammatically incorrect that might deter prospective downloads.

    How many apps have you shied away from because you can tell that the developer has either very poor English speaking skills or none at all? Like some spam emails - one awarkward expression can give the game away. :s

    First impressions can make or break you. ;)

    Just PM me your copy.

  • SocksSocks London, UK.Member Posts: 12,822
    edited April 2017

    @PhilipCC said:
    Like some spam emails - one awarkward expression can give the game away. :s

    Hard to no if that was delibarate or knot ?

    o:)

  • RedRoboRedRobo Member, PRO Posts: 680

    @jamie_c said:
    I always suggest paying a real living person to do translation. We have all seen copy that is written by 'automatic' translation and you can always tell it's not quite right.

    I would usually agree, especially for store descriptions etc.

    In this case the odd messed up word is not critical as it's a random message generator for which 90% accuracy would be acceptable.

  • RedRoboRedRobo Member, PRO Posts: 680

    @MusicBoutique said:
    Forget the Turing test - imho the day machines spit back perfect translations of all kinds of text is the day singularity has truly arrived... And time to run for the hills:)

    I think you're right! ;)

  • RedRoboRedRobo Member, PRO Posts: 680

    @pHghost said:
    Probably the easiest way is to use Google Translate.

    Export your table to CSV. Open up in a text editor. That gives you the words separated by commas. Copy/Paste to GT. Take the result, translated words separated by commas. Paste into CSV. Import CSV to Excel.

    As mentioned, translations like this can be sketchy. Of course, if you just need the words themselves and aren't building sentences from them, it's probably OK.

    Thanks @pHghost I think this will be possible. I just did a quick test. There are some issues with loads of speech marks and spaces being added to the text file which is messing with the formatting but I think there will be a way to strip those out.

    Looks promising though ;)

  • pHghostpHghost London, UKMember Posts: 2,342

    Yeah, automation won't always be 100% perfect, but it's the quickest way by far.

  • RedRoboRedRobo Member, PRO Posts: 680

    Just discovered this and thought I would post in case anyone finds it useful (still work in progress)

    With Google online spreadsheets you can use this formula:

    =googletranslate(B5,"en","es")

    This example will translate cell B5 from English to Spanish. By using Ctrl and drag you can copy this formatting to multiple cells. I'm doing it one row at a time.

    The other thing I discovered was that if GameSalad crashes when importing a .csv created externally just open it within Numbers on a Mac and re-export as .csv, this seems to fix any issues.

  • pHghostpHghost London, UKMember Posts: 2,342

    Cool! Great discovery. I was wondering why there was no spreadsheet implementation for GT, and there is!

    Yeah, Numbers CSV always works without fail.

  • PhilipCCPhilipCC Encounter Bay, South AustraliaMember Posts: 1,390
    edited April 2017

    @Socks said:

    @PhilipCC said:
    Like some spam emails - one awarkward expression can give the game away. :s

    Hard to no if that was delibarate or knot ?

    o:)

    Deliberate, to see if you were still on the ball. >:)

    Truthfully, it was the bloody autocorrect which, by the way, is now suggesting I use "auto-correct" instead of autocorrect! :disappointed:

    Lesson: re-read every word you type, or thought you typed before hitting "Save" or "Submit".

    See, I even had to edit this post twice before I was satisfried.

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