Translation

This page is intended to contain a summary of information on how to translate NetHack or other roguelike games into other languages.

Translations available

There is a Spanish translation of NetHack available. There are Japanese translations of NetHack and Slash'EM available.

The Spanish translation does not use GNU gettext, the universal system for translating all applications.

There is a Ubuntu roguelike translation project although it has just been started and is not yet active.

Translations not released

Many other people have started (and often abandoned) work on other translations; search the rec.games.roguelike.* newsgroups for more info. If you find information on abandoned roguelikes, please post the original translator's contact information here if possible.

Translation issues

Issues in translating roguelikes include:

• Issues that affect all software translators:
  • conjugating verbs
  • combining nouns and adjectives
  • mixing numbers and nouns
  • masculine/feminine
  • single/dual/plural

• Issues specific to roguelikes:
  • the parsing of text the user enters at the wishing prompt

NetHack often constructs sentences, such as "You hit the dwarf!", "The dwarf hits!" (not "The dwarf hit!"), "2 scrolls of identify" (not "scroll of identifys"). Issues that come up during translation include the conjugation of verbs, the combination of nouns with adjectives ("cursed", "rustproof"), numbering ("2 the scrolls of identify" would be wrong), masculine versus feminine words, and singular versus dual versus plural words. These issues are different in each language, and the NetHack source code often does not anticipate issues specific to non-English languages.

For more info, see the appropriate threads in the rec.games.roguelike.* newsgroups.