Translation
This page is intended to contain a summary of information on how to translate NetHack or other roguelike games into other languages.
This is not a complete list. For more information on roguelikes in your language, do a Google search.
Translations available
Czech
- CalcRogue works in English and Czech. CalcRogue is a Rogue clone for Windows, Linux, PalmPilots, and certain QWERTY-keyboard TI calculators.
French
Japanese
- There are Japanese translations of NetHack and Slash'EM available.
- Angband 2.8.3 and several variants have been translated into
Japanese. More information is available at the following web pages:
- Angband 2.8.3: http://plaza16.mbn.or.jp/~irisroom/jangband/jangband.html
- Oangband 0.4.1: http://www.kmc.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~habu/oangband/
- PernAngband: http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/kusunose/pernangband/index.html
- Zangband 2.4.0: http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-SanJose/9606/zg/index.html
- Tower of Doom is available in Japanese: http://panyara.hp.infoseek.co.jp/tod.html
Polish
- I do not know. Try a Google search or ask in the Polish newsgroup pl.rec.gry.komputerowe.roguelike for more information.
Russian
- Russian version of ADOM exists (in fact, there are several of them)
- There was an attempt to make a translation of Angband into Russian which met with some success. Search at http://www.googlegroups.com for more details.
Spanish
- There is a Spanish translation of NetHack available.
The translations of NetHack and SlashEm do not use GNU gettext, the standard system for translating all applications, because of the fancy linguistic operations that NetHack and SlashEm do.
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.
There is a Ubuntu roguelike translation project although it has just been started and is not yet active.
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/neuter, natural gender vs. grammatical gender
- 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.