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ARK Guide: How to localise!


Jatheish

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Hey Survivors!

As of Version 235, ARK now supports user-created localisations and custom fonts! This will allow survivors to create their own region-specific translations of the ARK with fonts including their language specific characters. 

So if you’d like to get us involved in helping translate ARK for the global community, you can join our crowd-source community on CrowdIn!

We’ll be using this platform to work with the community to collect their translations for ARK: Survival Evolved. 

https://crowdin.com/project/ark-survival-evolved

If however you’d like to work on your own localisation of ARK, you can follow the quick-guide below explaining how to do so!

Step One

In the Windows game folder, you’ll find a new application here: \Tools\LocalizationManager\LocalizationManager.exe

Run the application and check the languages that you wish to work on. Afterwards click “Update Archives from Manifest” to update your language’s set of strings with the latest global strings from the game. This means you’re updating the file to include all the latest that can be translated. Then you’ll want to click on “ArchiveFiles->XLS” to generate an Excel spreadsheet of all the localisations (separated by Tabs if you want to work on more than one language at a time). This process will take a few minutes to export completely, so give it some time and it’ll eventually say “Completed” on the status panel.

You can then upload that XLS to Google Docs or whichever platform you use for easy group editing.

Step Two

When you’re ready to re import new localisation, click “XLS->ArchiveFiles” and then choose your XLS, and it will import and integrate the localisation data for the checked languages.

An alternative method you could do is skip the XLS phase entirely and iterate directly on the localisation text files located here:
"\ShooterGame\Content\Localization\Game\YOURLANGUAGE\ShooterGame.archive"

However the formatting isn’t so straightforward so the spreadsheet would be an easier system to use for translators to view. 

Step Three

Next you’ll want to click on “Generate Game Files from Archives” and it will actually prepare the corresponding shipping binary localisation data for the checked languages for your display in-game. (This binary “\ShooterGame\Content\Localization\Game\YOURLANGUAGE\ShooterGame.locres” is what is actually used in-game for speed).

The localisation files themselves are located here, in whichever language subfolder you want to specify:

\ShooterGame\Content\Localization\Game\YOURLANGUAGE\

There are no hardcoded language directory names, so whatever language subfolder name you want yours to be, you then just run the game with the following commandline:

\ShooterGame\Binaries\Win64\ShooterGame.exe -culture=yourlanguage

http://www.lingoes.net/en/translator/langcode.htm

For example, for Spanish (which has been translated by some Community members!) it would be:

Quote

\ShooterGame\Binaries\Win64\ShooterGame.exe -culture=es

Step Four

Finally to replace custom fonts, just replace any TTF (from “\Engine\Content\Slate\Fonts\" ) with the same-named TTF in your language’s subdirectory, and they will override the corresponding Font. There are also some “distance field” UASSET fonts that can be reimported cooked out of the ARK Dev Kit to be overridden:

/ShooterGame/Content/OldAssets/UI/HUD/Roboto18.uasset
/ShooterGame/Content/OldAssets/UI/HUD/Roboto51.uasset
/ShooterGame/Content/OldAssets/UI/HUD/SansationBold18.uasset
/Engine/Content/EngineFonts/Roboto51SlateFont.uasset
/Engine/Content/EngineFonts/RobotoDistanceField.uasset
/Engine/Content/EngineFonts/HandwritingDistanceField.uasset

Also you’ll want to grab the latest ARK Dev Kit from GitHub, and open each of those Font assets in the Dev Kit. Go to the “Import Options” properties of each Font, change the “Font Name” to whatever Font you want to reimport as, and change the Unicode range to whatever is appropriate for your font. For example, for Russian it would be 0-451. 

Then you’ll want to right click the Font asset in the Content Browser and select “Reimport”, adjusting the settings until it looks good with some test language text. After the font has reimported satisfactorily, save it and then right-click and choose “Quick Cook Single Asset”. 

You’ll then want to select an output folder, and then go ahead and copy the Font Asset from the Output Folder. It’ll export into “\Output\ShooterGame\*” subdirectory, so ignore all the subdirectories and copy the Font asset file directly into your Localisation Language’s folder (without any further subfolders).

That Font UASSET will then override the corresponding one from the original game! 

Step Five

To distribute your localization, just zip up your localization language’s subfolder and then be sure to tell your players where to extract it, name into here:

"\ShooterGame\Content\Localization\Game\"

You’re welcome to rename the multi-line string in the Join Session menu to give credit to the people doing the localizing. We forgot to add a dedicated Credits text field for that but it’ll be in soon! :)

Once the enterprising groups get going with localisation, we’ll edit this post with sticky links to good work-in-progress localisations! 

Have fun and soon we’ll be providing some big countries for quality localisations in every real world language under the sun! Good luck guys and happy multilingual surviving to you :P

 Thank you guys for the support in allowing us to get going with this system!

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14 hours ago, Jat said:

There are also some “distance field” UASSET fonts that can be reimported cooked out of the ARK Dev Kit to be overridden:

/ShooterGame/Content/OldAssets/UI/HUD/Roboto18.uasset
/ShooterGame/Content/OldAssets/UI/HUD/Roboto51.uasset
/ShooterGame/Content/OldAssets/UI/HUD/SansationBold18.uasset
/Engine/Content/EngineFonts/Roboto51SlateFont.uasset
/Engine/Content/EngineFonts/RobotoDistanceField.uasset
/Engine/Content/EngineFonts/HandwritingDistanceField.uasset

Also you’ll want to grab the latest ARK Dev Kit from GitHub, and open each of those Font assets in the Dev Kit. Go to the “Import Options” properties of each Font, change the “Font Name” to whatever Font you want to reimport as, and change the Unicode range to whatever is appropriate for your font. For example, for Russian it would be 0-451. 

Then you’ll want to right click the Font asset in the Content Browser and select “Reimport”, adjusting the settings until it looks good with some test language text. After the font has reimported satisfactorily, save it and then right-click and choose “Quick Cook Single Asset”. 

You’ll then want to select an output folder, and then go ahead and copy the Font Asset from the Output Folder. It’ll export into “\Output\ShooterGame\*” subdirectory, so ignore all the subdirectories and copy the Font asset file directly into your Localisation Language’s folder (without any further subfolders).

That Font UASSET will then override the corresponding one from the original game!

 
Russian Localization progress
 
Dear Devs,
Our team has been translating the game into Russian since we saw news about it from upcoming patch notes.
Current state: Testing and editing translated text (we have translated more than 70%).

When we started testing, our members (programmers and modders) faced with the following problem:
UASSET fonts from Localization Language’s folder (Localization\Game\ru) do not override the corresponding ones from the original game.
Only some of those fonts are displayed in the game. However, everything is ok when we put new cooked Engine UASSET fonts into existing font folder: "/Engine/Content/EngineFonts/".

May be you know what we are doing wrong?
Does anyone have a correct working localization with custom UASSET fonts?

Anyway, we will send you our well edited version via e-mail aprox. in 9 hours (hah, ETA from ARK players). Is this a correct e-mail: info@studiowildcard.com?

 

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15 hours ago, Index154 said:

The german translation is absolutely horrendous if you ask me. Maybe I'll give it a shot and try to make it better.

Help us to make better translation on https://crowdin.com/project/ark-survival-evolved

and help us voting better translations that are suggested on each line (or adding you own translations)

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18 hours ago, AsH said:
 
Russian Localization progress
 
Dear Devs,
Our team has been translating the game into Russian since we saw news about it from upcoming patch notes.
Current state: Testing and editing translated text (we have translated more than 70%).

When we started testing, our members (programmers and modders) faced with the following problem:
UASSET fonts from Localization Language’s folder (Localization\Game\ru) do not override the corresponding ones from the original game.
Only some of those fonts are displayed in the game. However, everything is ok when we put new cooked Engine UASSET fonts into existing font folder: "/Engine/Content/EngineFonts/".

May be you know what we are doing wrong?
Does anyone have a correct working localization with custom UASSET fonts?

Anyway, we will send you our well edited version via e-mail aprox. in 9 hours (hah, ETA from ARK players). Is this a correct e-mail: info@studiowildcard.com?

 

Could you send us a zipfile of your UASSET font files and your translation files and we'll check it out :). You can upload it to dropbox or google drive and just pm me a link.

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5 minutes ago, Jat said:

Could you send us a zipfile of your UASSET font files and your translation files and we'll check it out :). You can upload it to dropbox or google drive and just pm me a link.

Ok, atm we are finishing moving to crowdin.com
It took some time for re-approving (with our 83% text). So I will send you a link later today.

I hope that Neizan didn't forgot the list with our contributors ;)

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4 hours ago, AsH said:

Ok, atm we are finishing moving to crowdin.com
It took some time for re-approving (with our 83% text). So I will send you a link later today.

I hope that Neizan didn't forgot the list with our contributors ;)

This list is on https://crowdin.com/project/ark-survival-evolved/discussions/28

To remember it :)

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AHTUxPK, today we were busy with fixing found issues. Public discussion was opened 2 days ago, now you can keep adding better suggestions, stop spamming, just do it better.
https://crowdin.com/translate/ark-survival-evolved/3/en-ru

Russian Localization v1.2 is ready for discussion: http://heroez.ru/ark/local

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5 hours ago, AsH said:

AHTUxPK, today we were busy with fixing found issues. Public discussion was opened 2 days ago, now you can keep adding better suggestions, stop spamming, just do it better.
https://crowdin.com/translate/ark-survival-evolved/3/en-ru

Russian Localization v1.2 is ready for discussion: http://heroez.ru/ark/local

No, thanks, I won't participate any more in the translation where votes and comments delete.

https://pp.vk.me/c629527/v629527791/3b134/d5-A6_Oh59Y.jpg

 

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@Jat :

Trying to help on french translation, I stumbled upon something I would qualify a problem or at least a threat to translation process.

I gave a summary of my point of view on crowdin : French/English explanation

I might be rude in my message that's why I'm offering to discuss it on the forum as well.

Nobody cares, don't mind it

Reardsg

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  • 1 month later...

One serious issue with the localization is that players who play on multi language servers do not have all information localized for them if the server is using a server based localization in a language different from theirs. It should all be player side in these regards not a mix. Worse if server's language doesn't have a Romanized alphabet/characters, the player sees ||||||| type keyboard characters supplemented instead.

This renders all tribe messages(who died, tamed what dino, etc) unreadable. It also renders dropped item information (by who/what) unreadable.

A simple solution would be to have the localization information based solely on the player side or have all servers carry all localizations and simply check which language default the player side uses and thus renders that information specific to their language. As it currently stands, its a mess for mixed language servers.

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  • 3 weeks later...

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