everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music
Updates: If you translated before a given date, make sure you are up-to-date. Thanks.
April 13: Make sure that the "Recording and submitting runs" link in the FAQ links to #submitting instead of #recording. Also, I rewrote the "How do I record my run?" section.
May 4: Rewrote the first sentence of the third-party controllers section in the rules.
June 13: Due to the forum switch, the old links to the forum are broken. You will have to replace any links containing yabb to the correct links in the current docs.
Hi! Would you like to help us translate SDA into another language? We would appreciate the help. You may work alone or with others. The duties are (it is preferred but not required that you do both):
1) Translate the FAQ, Rules, and Submissions pages. When you are done, contact Mike and send him the new files, named like faq_es.html for the español FAQ (2-digit language codes).
2) Give us your e-mail address or other contact info and allow us to make it available, so that someone may use you as a contact between themselves and SDA.
Qualifications:
Some languages will have many available translators. For others, we cannot be as picky since we will take what we can get. Here is an priority list in decreasing order of importance for translator qualifications:
A) Be fluent in the language you are translating to. It is highly preferred that you are a native speaker of this language, not someone who must consult a dictionary.
B) Be fluent in English. To avoid later misunderstandings, it is important that you translate the information correctly. Also, this will help you communicate with us.
C) Know your video games. This will help you make sense of the rules you are translating, and you will be able to better answer questions that someone might ask you. If you are the Japanese translator, and someone asks about Tenchi Souzou, it would be extremely helpful if you knew this was Terranigma.
D) Be committed to SDA. If you do not know if you will be around in half a year, that will be a disadvantage since we would need to find a new contact then to replace you.
When replying in this thread to say that you can help us, please rank yourself from 1 (you need to look most things up) to 5 (you could do a great job half asleep) in each of these categories. Something like: A5, B4, C3, D5. This will allow us to select the most qualified translators.
Translation ethos:
There is no need to attempt to translate anything literally or word-for-word. The wording is not important, only the meaning. Please take liberties to make the finished translation as clear and comfortable as possible in the translated language. Use your own judgment. In some languages, a compound word of the translated "speed" + the translated "run" might sound fine. In other languages, it might sound terrible, and you may opt to just use the English term "speedrun" untranslated, or come up with a new word that best conveys the meaning. If a specific game's terminology is used such as Maverick, you can use the translated word if you know it, or simply omit the example.
We would prefer if you edit the HTML yourself; if you do not know how, we will work with you, so just ask. Inside the HTML, you will notice that each sentence is given one line in the HTML. That is to ease the translation effort. Replace each line of English with a line in your language. Edit the links where appropriate, to point to correct links for your language. You do not need to edit the anchor links such as #watching.
Things you can do:
Since the goal is to expand SDA's reach globally, the duties seen here are very helpful, but they are the bare minimum. If you do a wonderful job with the translations, but nobody sees them, that would be a shame. So an important thing to do once the translation is finished, is to help us promote SDA in other languages. Do not spam, but when it is appropriate, tell people about SDA and link to us. It is up to you to help SDA grow!
If you would like to help us translate more pages other than the ones above (news page, game pages, etc), we greatly appreciate the offer. However, since that would be extra work for us that we would need to constantly update, such translations would not be hosted on SDA. The best thing to do would be to start your own page or blog, put your translations there, and give us the link. We would then list your link on the language-specific page.
For example, if you wanted to translate the news, you could start a blog. Every time SDA updates, you could make a blog post about the update. (There is no need at all to translate faithfully, since most of the jokes are English-specific. You can say whatever you want, such as your own interesting info, or simply list the runs without any prose.) If you are doing this, please link to the game pages, not the demo.pl itself.
Explanation of various phrases: (this is just to help you out, you don't have to use this or translate these)
autosave: the game saves automatically at certain points
backtracking: going back the same way you came
bounty: reward given to someone for a completed task
CD streaming: opening the top of the console while the game is running (the game will try to load a cutscene, fail, and you can close the console to effectively "skip" the cutscene)
cheat code: entering a special input that gives results not intended for normal play
clipping: for 3D games, this means squeezing between polygon boundaries to go somewhere unintended
crooked cartridge: a trick where the cartridge itself is physically bent, which changes the game's behavior
cutscene: uninteractive sequence in a game
dummy items: programmed into the game but unreachable without hacks
finalize: making a disc "final", so that you cannot write to it anymore, but DVD players and computers can read it
homebrew: self-created by an individual
laundry list: a long list that tries to include everything
macro: same thing as script for our purposes
mutually exclusive items: getting one means that you can no longer get the other
mysterious warping (often just called warping glitches): warping that is not obviously programmed into the game. A whistle in SMB3 is not considered mysterious, while the level skip in Contra 3 is.
out of bounds (OOB): going outside the intended game world, usually as a shortcut
quicksave: common in PC games, they let you save anywhere with the press of a key
script: common in PC games, allows the player to map an input to a set of outputs. For example, if a gun's recharge time can be avoided by switching weapons back and forth, a script can be set that does this with one keypress.
soft limit: a hard limit is strictly enforced, a soft limit is not
third-party: by others (For Nintendo consoles, Mario is a first party game. Resident Evil is a third-party game.)
turbo-fire: automatic pressing of a button very quickly
warp: teleport, i.e. go from one place to another without travel time. This is perfectly ok to do. Compare to mysterious warping.
warping glitch: see mysterious warping
April 13: Make sure that the "Recording and submitting runs" link in the FAQ links to #submitting instead of #recording. Also, I rewrote the "How do I record my run?" section.
May 4: Rewrote the first sentence of the third-party controllers section in the rules.
June 13: Due to the forum switch, the old links to the forum are broken. You will have to replace any links containing yabb to the correct links in the current docs.
Hi! Would you like to help us translate SDA into another language? We would appreciate the help. You may work alone or with others. The duties are (it is preferred but not required that you do both):
1) Translate the FAQ, Rules, and Submissions pages. When you are done, contact Mike and send him the new files, named like faq_es.html for the español FAQ (2-digit language codes).
2) Give us your e-mail address or other contact info and allow us to make it available, so that someone may use you as a contact between themselves and SDA.
Qualifications:
Some languages will have many available translators. For others, we cannot be as picky since we will take what we can get. Here is an priority list in decreasing order of importance for translator qualifications:
A) Be fluent in the language you are translating to. It is highly preferred that you are a native speaker of this language, not someone who must consult a dictionary.
B) Be fluent in English. To avoid later misunderstandings, it is important that you translate the information correctly. Also, this will help you communicate with us.
C) Know your video games. This will help you make sense of the rules you are translating, and you will be able to better answer questions that someone might ask you. If you are the Japanese translator, and someone asks about Tenchi Souzou, it would be extremely helpful if you knew this was Terranigma.
D) Be committed to SDA. If you do not know if you will be around in half a year, that will be a disadvantage since we would need to find a new contact then to replace you.
When replying in this thread to say that you can help us, please rank yourself from 1 (you need to look most things up) to 5 (you could do a great job half asleep) in each of these categories. Something like: A5, B4, C3, D5. This will allow us to select the most qualified translators.
Translation ethos:
There is no need to attempt to translate anything literally or word-for-word. The wording is not important, only the meaning. Please take liberties to make the finished translation as clear and comfortable as possible in the translated language. Use your own judgment. In some languages, a compound word of the translated "speed" + the translated "run" might sound fine. In other languages, it might sound terrible, and you may opt to just use the English term "speedrun" untranslated, or come up with a new word that best conveys the meaning. If a specific game's terminology is used such as Maverick, you can use the translated word if you know it, or simply omit the example.
We would prefer if you edit the HTML yourself; if you do not know how, we will work with you, so just ask. Inside the HTML, you will notice that each sentence is given one line in the HTML. That is to ease the translation effort. Replace each line of English with a line in your language. Edit the links where appropriate, to point to correct links for your language. You do not need to edit the anchor links such as #watching.
Things you can do:
Since the goal is to expand SDA's reach globally, the duties seen here are very helpful, but they are the bare minimum. If you do a wonderful job with the translations, but nobody sees them, that would be a shame. So an important thing to do once the translation is finished, is to help us promote SDA in other languages. Do not spam, but when it is appropriate, tell people about SDA and link to us. It is up to you to help SDA grow!
If you would like to help us translate more pages other than the ones above (news page, game pages, etc), we greatly appreciate the offer. However, since that would be extra work for us that we would need to constantly update, such translations would not be hosted on SDA. The best thing to do would be to start your own page or blog, put your translations there, and give us the link. We would then list your link on the language-specific page.
For example, if you wanted to translate the news, you could start a blog. Every time SDA updates, you could make a blog post about the update. (There is no need at all to translate faithfully, since most of the jokes are English-specific. You can say whatever you want, such as your own interesting info, or simply list the runs without any prose.) If you are doing this, please link to the game pages, not the demo.pl itself.
Explanation of various phrases: (this is just to help you out, you don't have to use this or translate these)
autosave: the game saves automatically at certain points
backtracking: going back the same way you came
bounty: reward given to someone for a completed task
CD streaming: opening the top of the console while the game is running (the game will try to load a cutscene, fail, and you can close the console to effectively "skip" the cutscene)
cheat code: entering a special input that gives results not intended for normal play
clipping: for 3D games, this means squeezing between polygon boundaries to go somewhere unintended
crooked cartridge: a trick where the cartridge itself is physically bent, which changes the game's behavior
cutscene: uninteractive sequence in a game
dummy items: programmed into the game but unreachable without hacks
finalize: making a disc "final", so that you cannot write to it anymore, but DVD players and computers can read it
homebrew: self-created by an individual
laundry list: a long list that tries to include everything
macro: same thing as script for our purposes
mutually exclusive items: getting one means that you can no longer get the other
mysterious warping (often just called warping glitches): warping that is not obviously programmed into the game. A whistle in SMB3 is not considered mysterious, while the level skip in Contra 3 is.
out of bounds (OOB): going outside the intended game world, usually as a shortcut
quicksave: common in PC games, they let you save anywhere with the press of a key
script: common in PC games, allows the player to map an input to a set of outputs. For example, if a gun's recharge time can be avoided by switching weapons back and forth, a script can be set that does this with one keypress.
soft limit: a hard limit is strictly enforced, a soft limit is not
third-party: by others (For Nintendo consoles, Mario is a first party game. Resident Evil is a third-party game.)
turbo-fire: automatic pressing of a button very quickly
warp: teleport, i.e. go from one place to another without travel time. This is perfectly ok to do. Compare to mysterious warping.
warping glitch: see mysterious warping
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