Translating Capitalism Lab Game Text

If you are interested in helping us to translate the game text in Capitalism Lab, you may read the instructions on this web page.

If you are new to Capitalism Lab: Learn more about Capitalism Lab – the Best Business Simulation Game ever created

We recommend that you join the following user communities dedicated to translations of Capitalism Lab to get assistance from experienced translators.

Capitalism Lab Forum

Capitalism Lab – Game Text Translation by Users“ forum

Discord

You may join the Discord channel https://discord.gg/7DVXZ5x dedicated to the translation of Capitalism Lab (organized by user “paulwoman”), to discuss with experienced translators.


Translation Instructions

The “Languages” folder 

Translation files of different languages are placed in the respective subfolders under <Capitalism Lab folder>/Language.
(For example: <Capitalism Lab folder>/Languages/German contains German translation files.)

If you are not sure where your Capitalism Lab folder is located, you may right-click on the Capitalism Lab program icon on Windows and select “Properties”, then select “Open File Location” to open the Capitalism Lab program folder.


The “Languages\<Language>\Translate” folder 

You edit the following files inside this folder:

T_game.txt – the main in-game text file for Capitalism Lab

T_basic.txt – the in-game text file for calendar months and some interface text.

Help.txt – the help text file.

Gm_help.txt – the help text file specifically for the new game setup menu.

You can replace the original text with the translated text. When you edit the text files, make sure that you do not make changes to any of the codes (usually in all upper-case) and control characters in the text files, as they are reserved for the game engine’s access.


Text Editor and Text Encoding 

We recommend using NotePad++ for editing the translation text files.

NotePad++ is a free editor that can be downloaded from http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

Capitalism Lab uses Unicode for its text files. So after you have opened a text file with NotePad++, you must select “Encoding” – “UTF-8” (without BOM) from the menu. (See below)

If you have edited the text file using another text editor previously which did not use “UTF-8″ (without BOM) encoding, you may now open the text file using NotePad++ and select “Encoding” – “Convert to UTF-8 (without BOM) from the menu.

(Tip: if you found that the first line in your TRANSLATE.TXT file is not translated in the game, it is likely because you forgot to set the Encoding to “UTF-8” (without BOM))


Font
If you are translating the game into a language that does not use the standard alphabetic characters (e.g. an Asian language), you will have to put a font file into the Translate folder as well.
We recommend using Google’s Noto font which can be downloaded for free from: https://www.google.com/get/noto/
As you will see on the Google Noto web site, the fonts are made available to the public under Apache License 2.0.Capitalism Lab is able to use OpenType Font files (with the file extension .OTF) or TrueType Font files (with the file extension .TTF).
To make Capitalism Lab use a custom font file rather than its original font, you can copy a OpenType Font or a TrueType Font file into the Capitalism Lab\Translate folder and add a text file called “FONT.TXT” in the same folder.
FONT.TXT is a simple text file which specifies the font file name that Capitalism Lab should load.It contains only one line, as follows:Font=<font file name>
Example: 
font=Noto.otf
You may either create this text file using a text editor, or copy the default one from Capitalism Lab\Font\Font.txt and edit it.

Asian Language

If the translated text is in an Asian language, you must add the following line to the FONT.TXT to instruct the game to display the text properly.

Asian language=yes

(You may add this line below the “Font=<font file name>” line in FONT.TXT)


Additional Translation File 

Please note that the translation files listed in the above Basic Translation Files section does not cover all in-game text.

You can create an additional file called Translate.TXT in the “\Languages\<the language>\Translate” folder with a text editor and follow the syntax described below.

Syntax of Translate.TXT:

<Original Text>|
<Translated Text>|
~
<Original Text>|
<Translated Text>|
~

Note: 

| – always place this character at the end of each text line
~ – place this character between text blocks

You can use % to represent variables in user translated text.

Example:

The stock price rose from % to %|
Le prix des actions a augmenté de % à %|

“The stock price rose from $10.00 to $11.00. “ will be translated into “Le prix des actions a augmenté de $10.00 à $11.00”

In other words, you may use % to represent text that need not to be translated, such as company names, person names, product names, prices, and numbers.


Distributing Your Translation Files 

To share your Capitalism Lab translation files with the community, you can email us at info@enlight.com with your translated files and we will include them into Capitalism Lab after reviewing it.


Image Files for Translation

If you are interested in translating text on images as well (for example, the tutorial banner images), you may download the following image files which are clear of any text.

Tutorial Banners without text
Scenario Banners without text
DLC Banners without text

Alternatively, you may download the following PSD files of the banners with preset fonts, prepared by contributor “torajiro”.
Tutorial and Scenario banners with fonts in PSD files

You may also read this article by contributor “torajiro”:
In addition to tutorial and scenario banners

Two Storage Methods of Translation Files

Starting from version 6.5.00, the game supports two storage methods of translation files, allowing for multiple translation files.

The old method – a single translation file
Translate.TXT is the only translation file in the TRANSLAT folder.

The new method – multiple translation files
You can put several translation files, all with the file name prefix “Trans_” in the TRANSLAT folder.

For example:
You may put 2 translation files:
Trans_Standard.txt – translation file for standard game text.
Trans_RealWorldMod.txt – translation file for text in the RealWorld Mod.

When the game starts, it will first look for files stored the new method. If not found, it will load TRANSLATE.TXT using the old method.

With this system, a translator can prepare the language pack containing files using both the old and new methods, thus supporting both old and new versions of the game.

Game version 6.5.00 or later will load TRANS_*.TXT.
Game versions older than 6.5.00 will load TRANSLATE.TXT.

The following diagram prepared by user “torajiro” illustrates how the loading process works.

Speech

You may add speech for scenario descriptions for non-English languages
The speech files can be placed in the folder \languages\<language>\scenario\speech (e.g. \languages\French\scenario\speech)