Hey guys, I would like to leave "My Virtual World of Goo Corporation" untranslated, since it is an intentionally glib product name in the fiction world. Those of you who speak non-english languages, is this a bad idea? Will it still be understood?

id leave "World of Goo Corp" untranslated but translate the "My virtual" part.
-> German: "Meine virtuelle™ World of Goo™ Corporation"

Thanks - and one more: I notice the French translation for "Little Miss World of Goo" is just "Miss World of Goo" - does anyone have a more accurate suggestion?

Little Miss World of Goo is hard to translate. Miss is a word used in french (like Miss France) but Little Miss isn't. Personnally it made me think about the movie Little Miss Sunshine (because I don't have other references with Little Miss in it).
Is there an idea or a reference behind "Little Miss" that I miss ?

Yeah, exactly that. It's like a crappy beauty pageant. What if I leave it untranslated for the French version? Would that work?

One more, for the Spanish speakers, is this right? I've been told the word choice of "bicho" might be questionable for "Time Bug":

"Haz explotarb un Bicho de Tiempo para volver
atrás en el tiempo
con un movimiento"

[quote author=kyle link=topic=782.msg5772#msg5772 date=1226616007]
Yeah, exactly that. It's like a crappy beauty pageant. What if I leave it untranslated for the French version? Would that work?

"Little Miss Sunshine" title is untranslated in france, so you can keep "Little Miss World of Goo" untranslated to reference the movie.

Hello!

I'm busy with the Esperanto translation, and in Esperanto, as well as in a lot of languages like Russian almost everything is translated or transliterated, as not everyone understands English. This is much less the cases for languages like Dutch and German (same language family, a lot left in English) and somehow French.

Yes, keeping 'Little Miss World of Goo' untranslated in French is probably the best solution. :)

In FR, as far as I know, "Miss" is written as "little Missis".
So little Miss would be litte Missis Missis.

I speak french and I find this "untranslated word" strange.
At first, it made me think "the dev forgot to translate this sentense"...

Pourquoi pas "Mam'zelle World of Goo" ?

Because here's "miss" means exactly what "miss" means in french. We don't say "Mam'zelle France" for the beauty contest but "Miss France".

Hi Kyle! I've been discussing with other user about translating or not "MOM" (Spanish version; I'd say it's almost perfectly done right now). We've seen that it's non-translated in any language (like WoG Corp), but I'd appreciate your opinion. Thanks.

fr: Thanks guys, I'll keep it "Little Miss World of Goo".

es: Manray, you suggest leaving "MOM" non-translated in Spanish?

Hi Kyle. No, sorry, I didn't explain it properly. I mean if it'd proper to translate "MOM" (as the informal way for "mother") to "MAMÁ" (direct translation in Spanish), or if you prefer leaving the English form, like in World of Goo Corp. To be fair, I thought through all the game that it would be some kind of acronym, but after finishing the game I didn't remember reading any explanation for "MOM", beyond the computer-style interface in Chapter 4 with the dialogues, of course, but didn't give a sense for M-O-M; not at least one that I can remember, or that I read in the script for the translation.

I noticed that in the english version of World of Goo the balls are referred to both as "GooBalls" and "Goo Balls".
There is a reason behind this differentiation? Should we keep the spacing of the english version?

For what it's worth (and pending an official response) kyle mentioned earlier that he prefered keeping MOM (and World of Goo Corporation etc.) untranslated. For what it's worth, the Spanish, German, Italian and Dutch translations currently keep it untranslated, so it's probably a good idea to keep it untranslated in French too.

Exact et c'est ce qui me gène un peu..  :-\

Please speak in english in this topic.
Kyle may have some reasons to keep MOM unstranslated, just wait for an answer

Hey guys, I've mentioned this in bits and pieces around the forum, so here's a consolidated answer:

"Goo Balls" - In english, both "Goo" and "Ball" should be capitalized, with a space between them. So, "GooBall" is wrong, if it appears anywhere it was a mistake on my part. In other languages, whatever the translated term is, it should be consistent, and ideally, capitalized since it is a keyword.

"MOM" - It is fine to translate this. Her name is not an acronym. Please just keep it short! Also, it is unlikely that the phrase "ask MOM" in the MOM window will change, as it is her logo, like "google", etc.

"World of Goo" and "World of Goo Corporation" - these should remain untranslated

Kyle, the lines with "GooBalls" and also "gooballs":

"When the pipe broke through the ceiling above, the sunlight must have blinded these rare Albino GooBalls."

"A new species of GooBall!" (in SIGNPOST_IVYTOWER_1)

"gooballs collected" (in IMG_RESULTS_BALLS)

"gooballs extra" (in IMG_RESULTS_EXTRA_BALLS)

This brings a new question. Shall we treat Goo Ball (and plural Goo Balls) as its name, or translate it (as "bola Goo" and "bolas Goo")?

Thanks for the tip on MOM and the other stuff!

Thanks! I'll change those first two. I will leave the following two as is, so they can remain small and not draw attention to themselves:

"gooballs collected" (in IMG_RESULTS_BALLS)
"gooballs extra" (in IMG_RESULTS_EXTRA_BALLS)

Translating "Goo Ball" is probably a good idea, as long as their name is consistently used throughout the translation.

We've translated these in french (Goo Balls -> Boules de Goo)

Thank you Kyle!

Spanish translation is done in the Wiki, it just needs some testing (I'll try to do it today or tomorrow), and that's it. The only thing missing is the word "Epilogue" in last chapter's main screen (it should say "Epílogo"), and maybe some other image. Beyond that, everything is done.

Thanks Kyle!

@Soultaker: I hadn't translated MOM yet because Kyle didn't tell us we could, just for that, so don't count italian in your list anymore ;)

Hi Kyle, Spanish translation is ready in the wiki. Just a few things: I added an Appendix at the end with a few images that were not in the translation (e.g. images in background); just three.

And to close definitely the translation, I'd like to know if finally you plan to change the images like "Ask Mom". You said it's unlikely, and I think that it will be better to use the English word if you won't translate it.

All the other stuff is translated, revised, and checked in-game.

[quote author=kyle link=topic=782.msg6440#msg6440 date=1227737461]
"MOM" - It is fine to translate this. Her name is not an acronym. Please just keep it short! Also, it is unlikely that the phrase "ask MOM" in the MOM window will change, as it is her logo, like "google", etc.


If I understand correctly this Ask MOM is used in a image and will not be translated? In that case it is better not to translate MOM at all. Otherwise I would expect MAM (and "Ask MAM") in the dutch translation.