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As Kafel did with French, I'm offering free Spanish (of Spain) translation to your games, as I want Spanish people to play the exciting games you guys are creating for them, in the SAME conditions the English speakers will have. If you want me to do so, you just need reference my full name in your game credits in an appropriate role (for example, "Spanish (of Spain) translator", "Spanish (of Spain) reviewer", etc.), although I'm willing to remove this condition in some special cases. If you agree, please, contact me at
xna(DDOT)spanish(DDOT)translator(AAT)googlemail(DDOT)com.
Take into account the following things before contacting me:
- Your game MUST support the Spanish full char set. For example, the fonts provided at the XNA Creators Club don't support them. In other words, you need to support characters such as "á" , "é", "í", "ó", "ú", "ñ", "ü" (and their corresponding capital letters), "¡", "¿" and a few other ones that aren't that common.
- If your localization solution uses placeholders, it MUST support variable words (depending on gender/number/person). For example, you could have the word "the" alone and then concatenate it with "boy", "boys", "girl" or "girls" to make "the boy", "the girl" and so on. As in Spanish the "the" word equivalent vary depending on the gender ("el" for "boy", "ellos" for "boys", "ella" for "girl" and "ellas" for "girls"), I need to know how to make that possible. For example, you can have four strings for the "the" word, depending on the gender and number. In English, all strings are the same, but not in Spanish (and other languages). The other case is related with the verbs. In Spanish a verb termination varies depending on the person. For example, present simple for "speak" in English has just 2 variations: "speak" and "speaks". In Spanish we have 6: (I) "hablo", (you) "hablas", (he/she/it) "habla", (we) "hablamos", (plural you) "habláis", (they) "hablan".
- Spanish texts usually are longer than the corresponding English ones. You should say me if your game can manage that because, if not possible, I need to make the texts shorter (for example, using abbreviations) so that they fit in the same size as the English texts.
- I need to know your text content file format, unless it's obvious. If you use the standard .resx format, you don't need to explain me nothing about it.
- I would need some context references. Some expressions could vary depending on the context. A beta copy of your game would be perfect for this but, if you don't can/want to send me a beta, you can add context descriptions when needed in your text files. Anyway, I'll ask you if I have any doubt about this kind of things.
- It might be impossible for me to translate your game, depending on your requirements, as I have limited resources (basically time). I'll tell you if I can translate your game or not once you contact me.
If your game is already in Spanish, I can review it. If it isn't Spanish of Spain but of any other Spanish speaking country (such us the American ones) it could contain words and expressions that are valid in those countries but invalid in Spain and, therefore, sound strange to Spanish people and, maybe, have no meaning for them. If the text is important enough, that could make the game impossible to play. Anyway, your Spanish translation could contain errors, some of them quite common in these Internet days (such as missing accents and/or starting question and exclamation marks - "¿", "¡"). Many Spanish people are used to write in that wrong way when writing e-mail's, IM chating or posting on forums and they don't realise they are writing improper Spanish. And that improper Spanish could be present in your Spanish translation, making it look unprofessional!!!
By the way, altough I'm currenlty living in the UK (North West), I'm a native Spanish (from Madrid).
P.S.
My full name is Abel García Plaza ;-). Be careful with the "i"
of García, which has an accent symbol the XNA Creators Club didn't
allow me to put into my creator name.
