Scrabble3D localization in Fulah language (Pulaar / Fulfulde)

Fulah language is also known as Ful, Peul, Peulh, Fula, Fulani, Pulaar, Pular ...

Fulani is mostly used for persons, the language being called Pulaar or Fulfulde, or Peul/Fulah/Fula. Officially, the terms Pulaar-Fulfulde are used by Ibrahima in software localizations (like Firefox for example).

Today, our new forum member Ibrahima contacted me by Private Mail. Here you may read what Ibrahima wrote to me:

Zitat von Ibrahima Sarr

---

Hi,
I wanted to localize Scrabble3D into Fulah (Fula, or Pulaar, Fulfulde) language (ff) but I could not see the email to contact you. So I took the liberty to PM you. Fulah is a west African language spoken in 19 countries with a total population of around 40 million. It is not a well resourced language yet but we are working hard to build digital content and resources. I would appreciate if we could localize Scrabble into Fulah.

Regards
Ibrahima SARR

---

Dear Ibrahima,

I am really pleased to read your PM. This is really great, and - I admit - rather exotic from a Western/European point of view, to get a new localization in an African language, the first non-European localization language!

Since Scotty is the developer of Scrabble3D, he might give you some advice about how to proceed for making your translation. Last autumn, when Scotty published Patch 29 of Scrabble3D, he had changed the translation system to po-files, but I myself don't like that po system, and I continue working with my old system when language files had ini format. Unfortunately I cannot help you regarding the new po file system. But I know many details about translation of Scrabble3D in general, because I know that program very very well and because I made the following localizations:
Swedish, French, Italian, Spanish ( - and just now I am working on the Latin localization).

I don't know which African country you come from, but I imagine that you speak French, too. So I recommend you to check my French language file french.lang as well, when translating the English texts from the file default.lang. The reason is that my files often are explaining in a better way the functions of Scrabble3D than default.lang does. po formatted default.lang is generated automatically by Scrabble3D, and it is the English text Scotty, whose mother tongue is German, wrote in his source code. english.lang should be improved, but we have not done it yet. Just now english.lang is still the same as default.lang, but English lang should be a better text than default.lang text in the future, more like german.lang or french.lang, for example.

Dear Ibrahima, please feel free to ask here whatever you want. We are pleased and will try to help you!

Thanks you Bussinchen
Merci pour l'accueil chaleureux!
.PO files are just perfect for me cause I am an experienced localizer! I use Virtaal to translate .po files and also use the Pootle server to manage localizations. Also I can help improve the english.lang source file aven though I am usually quite busy ;-).

Regards

Dear Ibrahima,

please take also in consideration what I wrote on Practical tips for translation of *.lang files (Localization).
There are many good advice for translators.



Cheers,
Bussinchen

• http://www.blog-pulaagu.com/?p=880 (in French)
• http://www.blog-pulaagu.com/?p=781 (in French)
• http://www.blog-pulaagu.com/?p=729 (in French)

C'est superbe! Bravo Ibrahima! Chapeau!

Merci Bussinchen,
Les choses avancent pas mal. Notre site principal en langue peule est ici: www.pulaagu.com

Welcome to Scrabble3D, Ibrahima!
You are free how to translate the program. I formerly made my own approach with text based files in style of ini files (extension lang). But recently I provide po format too. Other translators (in fact only akerbeltzalba) started with an online project on Transifex, but abandoned it for some reason. Perhaps we should discuss it in a larger circle.
Whatever you do, if you have finished your translation send the file to my address (it can be found in the program's about dialog). I'll publish it online so everyone has access to it.
It makes only sense to prepare a localization if you provide a dictionary. It should be a comprehensive word list of your language to allow the computer to be a good opponents. Don't care about formatting, the file should be non-binary with only a few lines at the header.
Once you have all stuff collected we can discuss the rules. That includes letter distribution for games, special conditions, and so on. On the other hand, rules (rather game settings) are the only part of localization that needs a complete program update. So it would be a good idea to synchronize work. Otherwise you have to configure those settings manually, which isn't a problem at all.
I'm looking forward to see games in Fula.

Yikes the top level title for the Fula forum is long ;)

Regarding the po, I'm getting slightly annoyed with Transifex because they take forever fixing stuff or adding a new language and as a result, the problem with the Gaelic plural bug is getting really annoying. And there was another problem I can't remember off the top of my head. But I'll keep looking.

The thing is, hosting the po files on the web really only becomes very important when you have teams working on each language. At the moment I think virtually every translation is handled by a single translator, so translating the po or lang files offline isn't really much of an issue.

Thank you, akerbeltzalba!

Zitat von akerbeltzalba im Beitrag #8

---

The thing is, hosting the po files on the web really only becomes very important when you have teams working on each language. At the moment I think virtually every translation is handled by a single translator, so translating the po or lang files offline isn't really much of an issue.

---

Zitat von akerbeltzalba im Beitrag #8

---

Yikes the top level title for the Fula forum is long ;)

---