Adding Translations

Shine uses a set of JSON files in order to build messages. Each plugin has its own folder reserved for its own translations. These files live under locale/shine/extensions/pluginname. There is also a single file for the core translations under locale/shine/core/. You will need to provide files for all the plugins, and the core strings.

Adding a new language

To add a new language, first take the existing enGB.json file as a starting point. In this file will be all strings that require translation. Rename the file to match the language code you want to translate to. For example, French would be frFR.json. If you're not sure what the name should be, look in NS2's installation folder under ns2/gamestrings, and match the file name (replacing .txt with .json).

Translation strings

Now you have your file, you may notice that quite a few strings have placeholder values in them. These look like this: {PlaceholderName}. These values will be replaced with data from the plugin. Hopefully the name of the placeholder makes it obvious what it's for. If not, feel free to ask in an issue or in a pull request with your new translation.

Transformations

You may also notice some placeholders have more than just a name. These are transformations.

Transformation syntax

The basic syntax is a placeholder value (e.g. {Value), followed by a : (e.g. {Value:), then the name of the transformer you want to apply to it (e.g. {Value:Upper). Following that, you can optionally add an argument to pass to the transformer by adding another :, then your value. Finally, close the tag off with } (e.g. {Value:Upper}).

You can also chain together transformations. The expected format is {Value:Transformation1:Transformation1's arguments:Transformation2:Transformation 2's arguments...}.

If a transformation does not require arguments, just add another : immediately, like this: {Value:Transformation1::Transformation2}.

All available transformations

Here's a list of all the transformations available, and what they do to the input:

Transformation	Action
{Value:Upper}	Uppercases the value, including many non-ASCII characters.
{Value:Lower}	Lowercases the value, including many non-ASCII characters.
{Value:Format:FormatString}	Performs string.format( FormatString, Value ). For example, {Value:Format:%.2f} would format the value as a number with 2 decimal places.
{Value:Abs}	Returns the absolute value of the given number.
`{Value:BoolToPhrase:Text if true	Text if false}`
{Value:TeamName:captials singular}	Takes a team number, and outputs the canonical name associated with it. Adding capitals capitalises the first letter, and adding singular returns a non-plural version (e.g. marine team instead of marines). For example, a team number of 1 and {Value:TeamName:capitals} outputs Marines.
`{Value:Pluralise:Text if value is 1	Text if value is not 1}`
{Value:Duration:Text if duration is 0}	Transforms the given value (taken to be a time in seconds) into a pretty string. If Text if duration is 0 is provided, then this will be output if the value is 0. For example, in enGB, Value = 60 would result in 1 minute.
{Value:NonZero:Text if value is not 0}	Outputs Text if value is not 0 if the given value is not 0. Otherwise outputs nothing.
`{Value:Sign:Text if negative	Text if non-negative}`
{Value:Translation:source}	Outputs the translated value associated with the input translation key, and optionally from the given source. Source can either be a plugin's name (e.g. voterandom), or Core to be taken from the core strings.

Contributing to the mod

Once your translations are complete, it would benefit everyone for you to contribute them directly to the mod. To do so, fork the repository, commit your changes to a new branch, then open a pull-request here on GitHub to the develop branch. If you're not sure how to do that, have a look at GitHub's guide here.

Please ensure your translations have correct grammar, spelling and are formatted as close as possible to the original English. The clean and professional look that this gives is an important part of my design of the mod, and I do not want that compromised for non-English users.