Translate Game Texts - defterai/StarCitizenModding GitHub Wiki

English language - /data/Localization/english/global.ini
Other languages - /data/Localization/<language>/global.ini

Game localization file is key value text file which used UTF-8 encoding with BOM in the file start.
Each key is separated from value by = character and value separated from next key by Newline character (in original file used LF: Line Feed, U+000A) In scope of localization process should be changed only value part of each line

Some sequences of characters are used by game for different purposes and should be not translated

• Special symbols: \n - newline
• Unnamed variables and tags (do not change order or delete them): %ls, %s, %S, %i, %I, %u, %d, %[0-9.]*f, <[^>]*>
  Example: %ls, %.*f, %0.0f, <font color="#660099">, </font>, <b>, </b>
• Named variables (order can be changed): ~[a-z]+\([^\)]*\)
  Example: ~mission(Location), ~mission(Location3|Address)
• Unknown purpose (please not remove them): @

Deals with conflicts:

• For show \n sequence in game just put additional \ character before it - \\n
• For show any unnamed format character sequence in game (as example: %s) use second % character before it - %%s

There is two way localization of game texts

1. Use Notepad++ or other file editor applications
2. Use smartCAT or other online tools for translation of imported file

Before use those Python script below please ensure you are install latest Python 3 with pip (python package manager)

python -m pip install pandas
python -m pip install xlrd
python -m pip install xlsxwriter

1. Convert latest English global.ini file to xlsx format by ini-to-xlsx.py script

python ini-to-xlsx.py global.ini global.xlsx

2. Import result xlsx file inside smartCAT
3. Translate in smartCAT

1. Put in directory with scripts latest English global.ini and rename it to global_ref.ini
2. Download translation from smartCAT as xlsx file
3. Convert xlsx back to ini format by xlsx-to-ini-with-ref.py script (it also auto merge global_ref.ini with your translation)

python xlsx-to-ini-with-ref.py global.xlsx global.ini

4. In case script report some important issues fix them in smartCAT and repeat steps 2-4
5. Copy result global.ini to /data/Localization/<language>/ folder and test in game

1. Download translation from smartCAT as xlsx file
2. Convert xlsx back to ini format by xlsx-to-ini.py script

python xlsx-to-ini.py global.xlsx global.ini

3. In case script report some important issues fix them in smartCAT and repeat steps 1-3
4. Copy result global.ini to /data/Localization/<language>/ folder and test in game

You can configure convert scripts by convert.ini settings file

[general]
allow_outdated_translation = true  ; use not migrated keys in result general.ini if no changes in variables (xlsx-to-ini-with-ref)
exclude_translate_keys =           ; list of keys divided by , which should be always not translated (xlsx-to-ini-with-ref)

; additional verification's for (xlsx-to-ini-with-ref)
[verify]
english_words_mismatch = false     ; search for mismatch of English words between translation and original
space_before_newline = false       ; search for spaces between newline to reduce file size
lost_newline = false               ; search for corrupted \n sequence (n was removed)

; split (ini-to-xlsx) or merge (xlsx-to-ini-with-ref) files to workaround smartCAT 50k keys limits
[split-documents]
names.ini = Human_First_Names_, Human_Surnames_, Human_Nicknames_  ; specify additional file names and key prefixes moved to those files