More Awesome Than You!

I was wondering if it's possible for us (players) to translate the whole game to another language? I know we can change names and such to our liking so I suppose we should be able to translate other things as well... I mean I am already familiar with the files but I still have to figure how to make game read the letters right (unicode???) and how to add language selection to the language meniu on installation. Any thoughts?
 P.S.: I know it's pretty crazy idea which need a lot of time and patience and blah blah blah... ::)

It is possible.  You will need to get SimPE to edit package files.  You will then browse through the various game files and alter any "text lists" you come across.  I imagine it will take you quite a while. 

Out of curiosity, what language do you want to use?

FYI localisation = technical term for translating a software product into another language.

I've had a quick look at this and it appears that for the majority of the text resources the game does a single install to the C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Text folder. The various package files contain the strings that are used in the game. You could apply the same principle to replacing these as has been done with the sim names live.package but it will mean replacing a lot of text.

There are some other resources located under the C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Locale folder and these are organised by language. It looks like the level of localisation depends on the target language e.g. the only difference between US English and UK English is the addition of a different sound package file for the UK. Other countries have additional localised resources e.g. objects.package, movies and UI.

The following assumes you have an English install of the game:
If the language you intend to translate to is similar to English word length then you will be fine with just translating text.
If typical word length is longer then you may have to modify the UI to accommodate the additional text e.g. a UI for German needs to allow more space for typically longer words.
If your install isn't English, then apply the same principles to your language.

You will need to do the same for every installed EP/SP otherwise there will be a mix of languages.

If you are looking at translating into a language with a complex/extended character set then localisation becomes more difficult. Sims2 has a UI where the player inputs text at various points. Japanese, Chinese and Korean will most likely make use of something called the IME (Input Method Editor) which allows the player to select the character(s) they want - obviously you can't have a PC/Mac keyboard with several thousand keys on it.

As far as character sets go, you will need to make sure that the (Unicode) font supports all the characters you wish to display. If it doesn't then you may well need to change the game font.

Lithuanian ;) And it's not me who needs it, I am happy with English version of the game. :)

Anyway, I tried editing some files and for some reason only a few editings show up in game :-\ The others appear untouched ??? Maybe I'm editing the wrong files? I took my files from Seasons EP. Maybe I should have started with main game files? Althought they seam to contain the same information as main game files. ::)

Why would someone want to translate the complete game when maxis is already selling English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese, etc. versions?

I guess the Lithuanian-speaker who wants it isn't comfortable enough in those languages?

I'm quite surprised if Sims 2 doesn't have official Lithuanian translation.

Sadly it doesn't (well, Lithuanian isn't such a popular language after all). And I know a whole bunch of people who would be very happy to get that. I mean young kids and elderly people who can't read English or Russian. Even my hubby's little brother.. He's now 6y/o and he can speak and read English but as his mother-tongue is Lithuanian we'd still like him to be able to read it and that's where the game could come in handy.
Plus, I've got too much time on my hands anyway...

The problem you run into (other than maybe a font issue) is changing anything in the "Text" folder. Any of the text in "objects.package" you can simply modify in the normal way that we hack stuff, but to change the other packages may require you to provide a full replacement of those particular packages.

Which version of the game are you running?  The European version has help files in numerous languages (not sure about Lithuanian), so maybe it would be worth checking with that (I wouldn't recognise Lithuanian if I saw it, but would this be Latvian? )

From wiki:

Thus, it seems like the original poster would still need to do a bit of tweaking to make the game easily accessible to Lithuanians.  That said, it might be a better starting block than the English version of the game.

While fascinating, this does absolutely nothing to address the fact that you need to TYDT.

I tell you what Pescado, why don't you take my turn for me?  Password is "abc" (no quotes).  I'm sure you'll find my current economic and military situation quite amusing.

Returning to the original poster's question, I mentioned the Latvian text files because I was pretty sure I recognised them - that wasn't to say that there wasn't also a Lithuanian file help file - there are several in there that I don't recognise.  Since there are a lot of object creators etc. working in Eastern Europe, Russia etc., there may well be another, East European Version of the game with yet more language options.

If nothing else, I would expect it'd be easier to mod a version of the game already using a cyrillic alphabet, like the Russian version.  Instead of trying to alter the English version.  The font should be already set to handle whatever characters were necessary, and since the languages are related, there probably wouldn't be problems with word size.

I am part Lithuanian.  My dad exchanges Christmas cards with his cousin who is in Vilnius.  I know absolutely no Lithuanian, though, and I've studied three foreign languages, so you're right that it's not that popular.

That's Finnish.

I said I wasn't sure.....but I should still think there's a version around somewhere.

Trust me, if there was Lithuanian version of TS or TS2 I would know (did I mention that I am the most active Lithuanian simmer ever?) ;D

Even though Lithuania was part of Soviet Union Lithuanian language is not at all related to Russian. They are incomparable, completely different. Especially the alphabet (Lithuanian one is based on Latin). I'm not sure about the word lenght yet, you might be right about that. However I find translating from English easier than translating from Russian as English is what I use everyday and to be honest I'm not too good at reading Russian (cyrillic alphabet issue)...

Well, it's not very easy to learn either.
 P.S.: I was born in Vilnius as well.

Might be worth contacting EAxis before they release Sims 3 and let them know of the existence of Latvia. Lithuania and Estonia - remind them that, since the fall of the Soviets, there are a whole load of countries with languages that they aren't catering for, thus a large market being lost to them (maybe most of the younger people in those countries speak English, or French etc., but I'm sure a lot of older people don't, or have forgotten most of what they learned at school, and would be keen to play the sims if it was fun and not a language learning exercise!)
Perhaps you could get up a petition - enough signatures and they just might take notice!

There are hundreds of languages they don't even attempt to support. Really, what they *should* do is just use a nice standard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettext type library and let people contribute translations.

Really, they are missing out on a lot of untapped market potential!  They support Rumanian - now I'm sure the population of Latvia or Lithuania is around the same size, so why support one and not the other?  Or have they just not realised that those three countries exist, because having thrown off the yoke of the soviet they just got on with organising their countries quietly by themselves without having to be sorted out by outsiders?  Not even requests for financial aid that I can remember....(or do they just not have anyone who speaks those languages working for them?)

Huh, I could've sworn there were at least a couple of letters that looked non-Roman on some of the cards and postage I've seen, but maybe I was mistaking stylized fonts, since they were in a foreign language.  (Okay, I wikipedia-ed it...there are twelve written vowels, which is seven more than the original roman alphabet, and this, plus the markings over some of the consonants, just made me think "other alphabet" instead of extra characters.  Whoops.)

I know Estonian's a real pain in the butt (it's got about sixteen cases for the nouns, if I remember right), so I'm wondering if all the Baltic states just got kind shafted because of difficulty issues.  Aren't the languages more related to each other than any other languages in Europe?  There may be lots of people who could do translations from English there, but if EA Europe is in London...it'll be harder to find translators.  As for Romanian, it's a Romance language, and it's related to French, Spanish, and Italian, so even if the population is smaller, it's related to more popular languages, and easier to learn.  (...hmm...wiki tells me also that it's spoken by 24-28 million people, as opposed to Lithuanian's 4 million, so that's significantly more.)

I suppose it is more, obviously, but they are both what might be considered at small in marketing terms - also the Baltic states generally have a wealthier and more educated population, I would think, than is true of the majority of the Balkans, which have mostly seen a great deal of problems in recent years.  And people who can't afford computers can't play computer games....and yes, Rumanian is a Romance language, but unlike, say, the Nordic languages, they are not mutually comprehended, but very much separate.

That's a great idea! Sadly EA will never agree with it ::) I should try emailing them about my plans though.

It's OK, you didn't know ;)

I've never heard real estonian speaking so I don't know anything about Estonian language but Lithuanian and Latvian have some similarities.
And talking about London, London is full of Lithuanians ;D! Althought probably the most of them hardly even speak English. Or even write their own language without mistakes... ::) Anyway, I suppose there should be some well educated people as well (not everyone goes to Uk to work in fish factories, you know).

True.

Not everybody who comes to the UK actually comes here to work!  And goodness knows why they want to come to a country which has one of the highest costs of living and the worst weather in the world is beyond me!

 Well most of lithuanians come to UK to work. Some of them come here to learn... Anyway. I think the weather here is OK.. Summers aren't too warm but they don't get winters with -30 degrees Celsius here.

I would certainly agree that most Lithuanians do come here to work or to learn, and also that our winters are warmer than yours - but there are always a few rotten apples in a barrel....

I don't mind cold and snowy winters myself because winter's my favorite season :D Snow on wintertime is probably the only thing I miss here (I'm in Scotland at the mo, if I didn't make it clear by now ;D) :( That's why I love Sims 2 Seasons so much :D

Blame it on global warming!  We used to have proper winters here too.  Back in the early 19th century they even had fairs on the ice when the Thames froze over, with people ice-skating and hot-chestnut sellers etc.  Then London got warmer because of the industrial pollution, a growing population etc., then next the country as a whole, and then the whole darned world!  Just hope that in your lifetime you still get snow in Lithuania because when the day comes that the climate there is like the UK's now, those people still around will be looking for an unclaimed mountain top!

Lithuanian and Latvian both stem from the Baltic branch of the Indo-European Language tree, so they are more closely related to each other than, for example, English and Latvian. Even though also English is a part of the Indo-European language family, it stems from the Germanic Branch of the family tree. Both languages have the same origins, but the similarities between Latvian and English can be seen only on the structural level of the languages, whereas Latvian and Lithuanian probably have similar grammatical forms and probably share similar vocabulary.

However, Estonian is not an Indo-European language, it belongs to the Finno-Ugric language tree, and is related to Finnish and Hungarian. As the origins of Lithuanian and Latvian when compared to Estonian are completely different, one can safely say that Estonian has very little in common with Lithuanian or Latvian.

If you cannot tell, I'm a linguist.  ::)

I am Swedish, but I have been travelling a lot in the Baltic states for my work, and by the way they are all three absolutley lovely and interesting countries! The beaches are awesome. Baltic Sea may be cold at times, but when summer is good, you can find the best beaches in the Baltic region in these 3 countries. Lots of nice spa's!
I found it fascinating to learn that Lithuanian actually is the indo-european langugage that is the closest to sanskrit, the old Indian mother language of them all.

Good luck with the translation project which sounds like a huge one to me. BTW, I think I read somewhere that they created simlish partly from Estonian.. at least the sound of it :)

I'd agree with you up to a point, but the addition of Norse, Old French plus the residual Celtic makes English far more complicated than German itself.  And the grammatical structure may have stemmed from a Germanic root, but it has become a great deal more flexible through incorporating elements from French. 

It is also interesting to note that a great number of simple, everyday words have a French root, and there are oddities such as the word chair, which stems from French (and chairs would, in medieval times, been owned only by wealthier people (who were not serfs etc.) while stool is, of course, related to the German Stuhl, and serfs etc. would probably have had those in their huts! (And serfs, of course, were the subjected Anglo-Saxons...)

Is there anything you actually know about, rather than just bullshit about in a pseud-y way?

1) There is no "residual Celtic" in English. There are a handful of words, nothing else. Similarities in grammatical structures between Celtic languages and English exist entirely because they are both Indo-European languages, and not because of any absorption of "residual Celtic" (by which I presume you meant Welsh or Gaelic, or whatever specific Celtic language you might think of).

2) Old Norse is also a Germanic language, and was so linguistically similar to Anglo Saxon that the integration, or cross-pollination of the languages resulted in a simplification of English grammar, rather than the reverse. Because Norse and AS vocab are similar enough to be mutually intelligible, while the major differences are in the inflected endings, the hybridised language evened out the declensions in the endings. That is, the grammar was SIMPLIFIED.

3) Norman French added hugely to the vocabulary of the language, and again resulted in a simplification of grammar. Middle English becomes, like Modern English, strongly dependent on word order rather than grammatical endings to convey meaning. So, in actuality, the language became LESS FLEXIBLE in terms of form, but far more flexible in terms of vocabulary.

Examples, expanded explanations and general resources can be provided on request.