English clean-up

[Keeper]

I don't have the tools or knowledge yet to do a proper PR on github, but I did just rebuild the game from master yesterday so hopefully none of this conflicts with anything. Someone can take care of this, perhaps...?

I just went through all the en.json files to correct mistakes, use proper headline-writing convention for the news headlines (i.e. removing of articles), add some variations to certain repeated texts (e.g. upset passengers), etc. The existing text had many cases where commas were used where full stops or semicolons should be, as well as some spelling errors and other little things. (I was once a journalist and editor by profession, so...)

I also tried as much as possible to standardise the writing into international English. It had been a mix of American and international. I did leave one piece of dialogue with "metric ton" instead of "tonne" as it's possible the speaker may be using American convention.

The updated files are here: http://www.keeper1st.com/pioneer/enfixes.zip

There is still an inconsistency in whether the player is addressed as "commander" or "Commander".

I could, potentially, create a separate set of files so that we can have "English (U.S.)" as a language option, for those who prefer our "maneuver" versus "manoeuvre", "fertilizer" versus "fertiliser" and so on.

[nozmajner]

I'll read it trough, cleanup is always welcome.
This will trigger quite a few translation strings to be translated again, but if I'm correct, the translation history will be present on Transifex, so it shouldn't be a lot of work for the translators ( I hope)

[Keeper]

I had another thought, for the ui-core file: Perhaps change "Start at Earth" and "Start at New Hope" to "Start on Earth" and "Start on New Hope" as for those starts it's talking about a planet on which you start, whereas "Start at Barnard's Star" refers to the system in which you start.

Any thoughts to changing the currency symbol away from the dollar sign into something less specific? For example, in Oolite they chose to use the Cruzeiro sign ₢ which has been obsolete for 50 years, making it into a "Credits" sign. In a little test I did sticking the symbol into a few bits of text, it seems the fonts used in Pioneer do not have this character, however. The generic currency symbol ¤ does appear in at least one of the fonts (I tested by adding it to a menu button and to the "we are in a blah-day orbit" text; it appears in the latter only).

[nozmajner]

It can be added to the font.

[nozmajner]

A stray thought, since you said you were an editor and journalist. Maybe you could be interested on the wiki, especially the worldbuilding articles about ships and such.

[clausimu]

Thank you for for paying attention to these details. It makes for a much more professional and "closer to reality" kind of playing experience, which is what we are after with Pioneer anyways. I also support the change in currency symbol, as long as it is immediately obvious that it is describing some sort of money.

[Keeper]

Yes, I've noticed a lot of work needs to be done on the wiki (especially a lot of misspelling of the possessive pronoun "its"). I could be coaxed, if there are particular articles you want done.

(The reason I looked at the language files in the first place was to see how it works and if a Japanese translation might be feasible. Some things would be tricky, like where it comes up with names for assassinations in the order of "(title) (name)" whereas in Japanese the titles would come after the names. Keeping both in English would be the best option I suppose. But I'm not sure I'm ready to do a full-on translation of everything!)

As for potential currency symbols, we could be a bit cheeky and use ₿ (Bitcoin) or Ð (Dogecoin), suggesting that one of those crypto-currencies actually takes over all of human economics! Dogecoin is considered open-source, so any license issue shouldn't be a problem like it could with Bitcoin. I can see it now: "Pioneer Space Sim: So space. Much wow."

[Keeper]

Darn it; I was just playing and spotted another mistake. "It's normal business trip" instead of "It's a normal business trip".

I updated the files in the zip since nothing has been done with them yet. (This also means the changes of prepositions on the start menu as suggested above.)

[Keeper]

Zip file updated for latest build (new menu UI).

[GunChleoc]

(The reason I looked at the language files in the first place was to see how it works and if a Japanese translation might be feasible. Some things would be tricky, like where it comes up with names for assassinations in the order of "(title) (name)" whereas in Japanese the titles would come after the names. Keeping both in English would be the best option I suppose. But I'm not sure I'm ready to do a full-on translation of everything!)

This could be fixed by giving translators a string with ordered placeholders to translate, something like:

Code: Select all

{title} {name}

which you could then translate as

Code: Select all

{name} {title}