This guide is only for DBOG translators aiming to translate quest texts from Chinese/Korean into English. Please correct me if any information here is wrong, I’m just a newbie to this game and a translating volunteer.😅I was clueless at the start and am slowly figuring things out, and hopefully this guide will help if any new volunteers join us.
First of all, we need to prioritize making proper English translations. So we can use it as a base language for translating into other languages (Spanish, French, German, etc.).
DBO was originally developed by a Korean studio and only published in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. It doesn't have an "official" English script. The DBO source scripts were written in Korean/Japanese/Chinese. The latest official release is version 1.57, which is written in Chinese. And DBOG is a fan server project using the Taiwanese client as a base for further updates/development. (p.s. version 1.54 is in Korean, and supposedly not much different compared to 1.57)
The English texts we see in DBOG so far were translated by DBO fans, and were mostly likely machine-translations. Unfortunately, the English quest texts are impossible to understand in many cases:
On another note, the Chinese source texts can sometimes be poorly written/proofread. This might be due to them being translated from Korean or being produced too hastily. Translators will need to look for context to correct those errors.
If we only follow the current English texts:
- Players will be given tasks without properly explaining what is happening and why.
- Players won't be able to figure out the right answer to a quiz.
- The same npc/mob/object/place might have different names.
- Players may think some NPCs are kind, even though they are deceiving and rude by canon. (or vice versa)
- The list goes on...
Therefore, people who understand Chinese/Korean and can translate quest texts into English are very much needed.
# DBO Translation Tool
Once being invited as a translator, you can access a site called DBO Translation Tool. It is for English translation by default, or you can pick languages from the top-right drop-down menu.
Once logging in, The homepage looks like this:
The quest texts page looks like this:
The left side is what we currently see in DBOG, and the text boxes on the right side are for translations that need to be submitted. Be aware that once hitting the submit button, all text boxes within the same page will be sent, all IDs that have been translated will be removed from that page, and you won't be able to edit those IDs again.
Here are some problems you might encounter:
Q1. Where are the source Chinese/Korean texts?
The translation tool site uses fan-translated English instead of source Chinese/Korean texts as its base. (some of them remain in Chinese/Korean)
But you can download the source script on github: OpenDBO-Localization
It is recommended to download these four files:
- Traditional Chinese (TW) / -- Source texts, or download from Korean folder if you are more familiar with Korean.
- table_quest_text_data.xml
- table_text_all_data.xml
- English / -- Fan-translated texts
- table_quest_text_data.xml
- table_text_all_data.xml
"table_quest_text_data.xml" contains all quest texts. "table_text_all_data.xml" contains most of the names in-game. You can open them in a plain-text editor (notepad, vsc, sublime text, etc.) and they look like these:
Q2. What are those [object = "xx"], [place = "100xx"], etc. ? Where do I look up those codes?
Those are codes for specific names. Examples:
[object = "1000"] is "Popo Stone/波波之石"
[etc = "3017"] is "Namekian/那美克星人"
[place = "11006"] is "Fran Fran Desert/法朗沙漠"
By rule, you should leave those codes alone and submit translations:
But in many cases, the source texts directly use names instead of codes, or worse, inconsistent/misplaced names, and we need to figure out how to translate them:
Besides, it’s difficult to fully understand a quest if we have no idea what those codes are. But looking up those codes on the translation tool site is currently not available. However, you can look them up in the OpenDBO files mentioned above.
p.s. I've been told it is ok to use table_text_all_data.xml (English) from OpenDBO as name references. If name translations have been updated by DBOG translators, but quest translators use OpenDBO as references, inconsistency will happen. There's nothing we can do to avoid it so far.
Q3. Can I submit only one quest at a time?
Currently the text/id searching function doesn't work properly. Translators have to submit one page of translation at a time.
# Quest IDs and sections
Every quest has a unique ID: [1~4 digits]+[2 digits]
The left side is for identifying a quest. The 2 digits on the right side are for separating different parts of the same quest. For example:
3201~3299 are from the same quest.
23401~23499 are from the same quest.
622201~622299 are from the same quest.
And here’s a quest ID list: (PDF download)
(This is done by roughly glancing through table_quest_text_data.xml and it might have errors.)
ID 1**~2** are human starting quests. I count it as one “quest section”.
ID 201**~400** is another section that includes namek starting quests.
ID 401**~600** is another section that includes majin starting quests.
Quests that belong to the same quest section usually are related to each other. They might share the same events, NPCs, quest items, etc. If we randomly pick a page and start to translate, we might get the context wrong. It would be a better practice that each translator should pick “one quest section” to focus on, and only move forward to other sections after finishing the picked one.
p.s. I’m currently doing namek starting quests (ID 201**~400**).
p.s.s. You can inform us which section you want to translate first here, or on the translator-chat of DBOG discord.
